<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Smoking Guns (Hot to the Touch) by gentlegrain</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26671534">Smoking Guns (Hot to the Touch)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlegrain/pseuds/gentlegrain'>gentlegrain</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Slow To Update</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:48:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,464</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26671534</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlegrain/pseuds/gentlegrain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh, worm? It’s not safe to go back?” Benrey leans back, nonchalantly crossing one leg over the other. “Aw, what a bummer. Sounds like I’m gonna need a place to stay, huh? Friend.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Benrey/Gordon Freeman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>164</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>343</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Week 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><a href="https://gentlegrain.tumblr.com">My</a> earnest, if clumsy, love letter to this fandom.</p><p>Please note that the rating may be bumped up from Mature to Explicit with later chapters.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gordon doesn't know what to make of the fact that Tommy's terrifying dad drives a perfectly innocuous station wagon.</p><p>As Gordon climbs out of the frumpy 90s relic, covered from head to toe in dog hair, the older Mister Coolatta manually rolls down the driver side window.</p><p>“I do hope you enjoyed your time at my progeny’s birthday party, Doctor Freeman,” he says, in that vaguely fraught and halting way of his, “despite all the… <em>Unfortunate</em> events that preceded it.”</p><p>“Sure,” Gordon says, because he’s too fucking exhausted to think about anything except flopping down and passing out in the safety of his home, never mind making small talk with— aliens? God, he doesn’t even <em>know</em>, and can’t bring himself to care, even as a scientist. He’s basically salivating at the thought of getting to sleep in his own bed again. “Thanks for having me, I guess. Can I… Go?”</p><p>Another window rolls down in the back, and Doctor Coomer sticks his head out and implores, “We’ll be seeing you around, won’t we, Gordon?”</p><p>“Of course,” Gordon says, less enthusiastically than he'd like. He does mean it from the bottom of his heart, even if the thought of doing anything but hibernating for the next fuckin’ <em>month</em> makes him want to scream right now.</p><p>He doesn’t stay to watch the car disappear into the distance. A distant bark from some next-door neighbor’s yard has him fumble with his keys and drop them on his porch – still getting used to having his dominant hand back, after all – and suddenly he feels very, very vulnerable. People only ever drop their keys in cheesy horror movies or romance flicks, when the camera pans up again, there’s always someone standing <em>right</em> there.</p><p>Which is completely irrational, right? He’s <em>home</em>. It’s not even dusk yet, the suburb he lives in is almost a little too peaceful to begin with, and he’s still wearing a protective suit that can withstand anything from bullets to radiation, so honestly? After everything he’s just been through, there’s no way the thing that’s finally gonna take him down is gonna be some hapless burglar, and he's confident he could give your average B-movie serial killer a run for their money as well.</p><p><em>You’re okay</em>, he loudly thinks at himself. <em>You’re safe now. You made it. </em>We<em> made it.</em></p><p>
  <em>Right?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Right.</em>
</p><p>He stands on the porch of his house for a solid minute or two, nervously jiggling the keys in his left hand.</p><p>Nothing happens when he goes in, so he peels himself out of the HEV suit, goes directly to bed, and dreams about an anchor inexorably pulling him to the bottom of the ocean as he desperately tries and fails to unchain himself from it.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>It’s surprisingly easy to slip back into his normal habits.</p><p>So he sleeps a little late, but so what? Sometimes you gotta go quantity over quality, and it’s not that unusual for one of his Saturdays, anyway. For breakfast, he treats himself to a tall stack of quick and easy pancakes that taste better than anything ever has or ever will for reasons that have nothing to do with flavor.</p><p>Before he takes his morning shower, he stops in front of the mirror to assess the damage. His entire torso seems to have erupted into purple and yellow bruises overnight, but they honestly look worse than they feel. All in all, he’s mostly just sore in places previously unknown to man and feeling a little unsteady after all the blood he’s lost lately. The fingers on his right hand are still a little numb, but it’s a small price to pay for having a right hand at all, and there’s not even a scar to suggest he ever lost it in the first place.</p><p>He knows perfectly well that walking out of Black Mesa with no broken bones or lacerations means he got off <em>extremely</em> lucky. He just hopes his black eye will fade as quickly as possible, because he does <em>not</em> know how to answer any questions his neighbors or the people at the adoption agency might have about it. Everything else he can hide under his clothes.</p><p>After getting dressed post-shower, he walks out onto his backyard patio with a steaming cup of coffee in hand and feels perfectly justified in having some pretty sappy thoughts about sunlight and toothpaste and every other everyday convenience he would never take for granted again.</p><p>It really is a fantastically beautiful day to have a mangled figure crawl out from a bush in his backyard and start approaching him at all fours.</p><p>Gordon’s shriek would make the best scream queens proud.</p><p>He barely has time to process what he’s seeing, never mind figure out how to defend himself, before the figure has reached him and sprung upright. In that perpetually zoned out voice that Gordon would recognize in his sleep, it drones: “Oh, you came back.”</p><p>Gordon works his jaw while his mind spins a wheel and finally lands on, “I… <em>Live</em> here.”</p><p>“Huh.”</p><p>“Where’d you <em>come</em> from?! Have you been stalking me?” He gestures at the bush accusingly. “Did you spend the whole night in there, just waiting for me to come out? Why—”</p><p>“How’d you get in, though?”</p><p>Irritation, as it often happens when it comes to Gordon’s interactions with Benrey, is quickly starting to overtake both his common sense as well as his initial fear. “Again, this is <em>my house</em>, where I <em>live</em>. Did you follow me here last night?”</p><p>Benrey’s bullet-ridden form, more skeleton than human in some spots after all the damage it’s sustained, eyeballs the modest brick house Gordon calls home with its empty eye sockets. “Looks different.”</p><p>Gordon shakes his head in astonishment. “<em>You</em> look different, man. <em>Jesus</em>. You’re not dead! How are you not dead?” He warily reaches out towards Benrey and sets a hand on one of his blood-sticky shoulders. “No offense, buddy, but… Actually, you know what? <em>Full</em> offense. We shot you, like, a <em>billion</em> times.”</p><p>From that quick touch alone, Gordon can tell that Benrey, or his body, is barely more than loose shards of bone and lumps of flesh held together by the ragged strips of his uniform and formerly bullet-proof vest. But if his perpetually bored expression is anything to go by, Benrey doesn’t seem to be in any pain, or even mild discomfort.</p><p>The torn texture of his skin is too gross to actively dwell on, though, even as a scientist. Gordon tries not to be too obvious about yanking his hand back.</p><p>“It’s cool.” Benrey knocks his knuckles against the side of his comically over-perforated headpiece. “S’why I wear a helmet. Safety first, bro.”</p><p>“You crazy bastard,” Gordon says, with open admiration. “You really aren’t human, are you?”</p><p>Benrey doesn’t have much of a face left to emote with, but he manages to stare at Gordon with something like annoyance, like he’s just said something really fucking stupid and has wasted not just his but the whole world’s time with it.</p><p>Something very important occurs to Gordon then that he honestly should’ve thought about much sooner than a full minute into their conversation.</p><p>“Why are you here, Benrey?” He takes a cautious step back, raising his hands into the air like he’s at gunpoint. “You’re not here to take revenge, are you?”</p><p>“Revenge for what?” Benrey takes a quick step towards him and gets right up in his face. “You do something I should be upset about? Huh? Think you might’a hurt my feelings somehow?”</p><p>Gordon desperately tries to remember where he put his weapons. <em>Any</em> weapon would do. He had so many of those! Did he bring a single one home? Or has he been leaving a trail of guns behind him along his way, like in some fucked up grimdark Hollywood adaptation of Hansel and Gretel, only to have run out of them now that he actually needs them? God, he can barely remember Tommy’s birthday party or the movie after it; he’d been too burnt out to pay attention to much of anything at that point.</p><p>Itching for something sharp or hefty to hold onto, he clasps his hands together behind his back and says, carefully, “I’m, uh, guessing you’re not happy about us killing you last night.”</p><p>Benrey crosses his arms and jeers, “Looks like you didn’t do a very good job of that, did’ja?”</p><p>He’s not exactly wrong about that. It’s a little too soon to tell how Gordon feels about it, though, other than fear. “Okay, so if this isn’t about revenge, why are y—”</p><p>“I don’t think this is your house.”</p><p>Gordon can already feel a headache coming on. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “It <em>is</em>, it <em>is</em> my house, I own the place, I’ve lived here for <em>years</em>, <em>none</em> of this is up for debate. Please, I am <em>begging</em> you to tell me why you’re here, Benrey.”</p><p>“For my, um. S-stuff.”</p><p>“Stuff? What stuff? Why would<em> I</em> have <em>your</em> stuff?”</p><p>“I keep it here.”</p><p>“I’ve never even <em>met</em> you before we got stuck in Black Mesa for…” How fucking long were they down there? “I don’t know, days? Weeks? So when the fuck would you have brought <em>stuff</em> here?”</p><p>Benrey doesn’t grace him with a response. He walks past Gordon and waltzes in like he owns the place.</p><p>Very, very briefly, Gordon wonders if he could simply <em>not go in his house anymore</em>. It’s just a pile of bricks! He could always get a new one. Or hop in his car and drive south across the border. Go off the grid and disappear into the vast rainforests of South America. Or become a sheep farmer in Mongolia, or whatever.</p><p>
  <em>Pull yourself together, Gordon.</em>
</p><p>He takes out his phone and calls Doctor Coomer, waiting for what feels like an agonizingly long time for him to pick up.</p><p>The moment the call goes through, Gordon says, “Benrey’s back.”</p><p>“<em>Oh.</em>” Gordon can hear the clatter of utensils against a plate. <em>“How is our esteemed colleague? Doing well, I hope?”</em></p><p>“How is <em>Benrey</em> doing?” Great to hear everyone’s still got their priorities in order. <em>What about how </em>I’m<em> doing?</em> “I… Didn’t exactly stop to ask? I mean, he looks like a fuckin’ zombie, so probably not great.”</p><p>“<em>That’s no way to talk about a valued friend and colleague! I’m quite disappointed in you, Gordon.</em>”</p><p>In the background, a different yet equally familiar voice grouses, <em>“Just tell him to fuck off. Whatever it is, it can wait till after lunch.”</em></p><p>“Is that Bubby?”</p><p>Doctor Coomer clears his throat very deliberately. <em>“We’d love to help you, Gordon, but we’re in the middle of something very important right now. Do you think you could hold out for…</em>” There’s a rustling sound, and a more muffled,<em> “Bubby, how long do you think we’ll need?”</em></p><p>“<em>Judging by this dessert menu, Harold, I’d say four, maybe five hour</em>s.”</p><p>In his mind’s eye, Gordon imagines his little house being stomped on by Benrey’s giant undead corpse for five or four or <em>any</em> number of hours while Doctor Coomer and Bubby are just getting their tiramisu on.</p><p>He starts hyperventilating a little.</p><p>“<em>Hours</em>? Tell me you guys aren’t gonna leave me alone here with Benrey for <em>five fucking hours</em>,” Gordon begs. “What the fuck am I supposed to do all by myself if he tries to kill me again? I’m not wearing my HEV suit anymore, I don’t know where any of my weapons are, I lost my gun ha—”</p><p>Deep breath.</p><p>“I got my regular hand back,” he corrects himself. “Doctor Coomer, I’m just <em>a guy</em>. You two basically have superpowers. I could <em>really</em> use your help when shit hits the fan.”</p><p>There’s a moment of silence on the other end, followed by intense conspiratorial whispering that Gordon can’t quite make out.</p><p><em>“We may be able to come by tomorrow,”</em> Doctor Coomer finally announces. <em>“I really am sorry, Gordon, but that’s the absolute best we can do at such short notice!”</em></p><p>Despite the apology, he doesn’t <em>sound</em> particularly sorry. Mostly he just sounds like he’s trying to talk with a spoon in his mouth.</p><p>“What the fuck? Doctor Coomer, I thought you were talking about <em>hours</em>, now it’s ‘<em>maybe tomorrow</em>’?”</p><p>“<em>Good luck, Gordon!</em>”</p><p>“No-no-no, wait—!”</p><p>Doctor Coomer has hung up on him.</p><p>Gordon looks up from his phone at his unassuming little house with apprehension.</p><p>He walks in just in time to see Benrey pop his head out the bedroom door, a pile of clothes bundled up under one arm.</p><p>“I can’t find my hoodie,” Benrey says.</p><p>“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”</p><p>“My PS2 hoodie. It’s not here.”</p><p>Gordon spreads his arms out, palms up, in lieu of saying, <em>what the fuck do you want me to do about it?</em></p><p>In response, Benrey clicks his tongue in irritation. “It’s not in with your fuckin’ Silicon-Valley-ass button-ups, it’s not in the washer, it’s not in the laundry basket.” He bends down to peer under the couch. “I’m gonna be <em>so</em> upset if we don’t find it.”</p><p>The way he says it honestly doesn’t come across like a threat – or, at least, not any more than everything else he says or does. But Gordon does feel compelled to help, if only because his bedroom looks like it’s just been subjected to a particularly vindictive drug raid, and Benrey is pretty much guaranteed to move on to his living room next.</p><p>There’s no way, realistically speaking, that he could <em>possibly</em> know anything about fucking Benrey’s fucking shirt or whatever. But every other sensible option has already been ruled out, so he bites back on the impulse to complain about the mess and icily suggests, “Did you check the dryer?”</p><p>They find out that the hoodie is, in fact, in the dryer, mixed in with some of Gordon’s clothes and still slightly warm. Gordon’s not gonna be the creep who sniffs someone else’s clothes, but he’d bet if he did, it’d smell like the laundry detergent he uses, too.</p><p>He has never seen this hoodie in his life.</p><p>His quest apparently completed, Benrey drags his mauled corporeal form, his dryer-fresh hoodie, and his crumpled wad of assorted articles of clothing into the bathroom.</p><p>And then opens it again barely seconds later. Notably, he emerges not only dressed in the clothes he went in with, but also, as far as Gordon can tell, but shower-fresh and fully healed of his diverse assortment of fatal wounds from the day before. His torn-up work uniform and helmet are nowhere to be seen.</p><p>In terms of weird shit Benrey can do, this doesn’t even make it into the top twenty. The sweatpants and hoodie combo doesn’t really surprise him, either, because it’s exactly the kind of low-effort, high-comfort outfit someone who unironically self-identifies as a gamer would wear. The shaggy, unkempt mane of dark hair is kind of unexpected, though.</p><p>Benrey does a showy little spin and strikes a pose with his hands on his waist, topping it off with the most lethargic wink Gordon has ever been recipient to. “How do I look?”</p><p>Like a regular person, maybe? A bit on the pale side, but still within the parameters of what Gordon considers human. The dark rings under his eyes must’ve been always there, but it’s only now when the rest of his look matches that Gordon notices the extremely strong ‘<em>I don’t have my life together and I’ve fully accepted it</em>’ vibe Benrey gives off.</p><p>More than anything, it’s honestly kind of hard to reconcile how <em>normal</em> Benrey looks in the familiarity of Gordon’s home with the fact that just yesterday they were in another dimension actively trying to kill each other.</p><p>Benrey leans forward to run his hands through his hair, feeling it out.</p><p>“You look like a malnourished Redditor,” Gordon says. “Or a translucent cave grub. I really thought you’d have a military cut, like cops usually do?”</p><p>Benrey scowls mid-ruffle. “I’m not a cop, bro.”</p><p>“Yeah, you just act and look and sound like one.”</p><p>“A real cop would probably wanna arrest you for killing all those innocent people.”</p><p>“I swear to god, Benrey—”</p><p>The doorbell rings, and both of them immediately snap a hand to the waist to reach for guns that neither of them have anymore.</p><p>They share a look.</p><p>“You open it,” Gordon says. “You’re immortal. If it’s a cop—”</p><p>Benrey throws himself onto the couch and laces his fingers together under his head. “You live here, you do it.”</p><p>“You said I <em>don’t</em> live here.”</p><p>“I said it’s <em>not your house</em>, idiot—”</p><p>The doorbell rings again, accompanied by a singular happy bark.</p><p> </p><p>“Bubby texted me and asked me to come check up on you,” Tommy says.</p><p>Once Gordon’s done letting him and Sunkist in, he takes the leash off Sunkist and the shoes off his feet, but the propeller hat, bless him, stays on.</p><p>Gordon’s relief is almost palpable. He knows that Tommy isn’t built for violence the way Doctor Coomer and Bubby are, but at least he now has <em>someone</em> competent and knowledgeable to back him up.</p><p>He says, “Thank you for coming at such short notice, Tommy. I really appreciate—”</p><p>“H-how are you holding up, Benrey?”</p><p>Ah, right. He keeps forgetting everyone else is on Team fuckin’ Benrey for some reason. Even Sunkist jogs on over to the couch and settles his snout on Benrey’s knee.</p><p>Benrey absently pets the golden retriever behind her ears. “Just vibin’, I guess.”</p><p>“In <em>my house</em>,” Gordon points out.</p><p>“You’re not listening. I keep telling you, it’s not your house.”</p><p>“You see what I’m dealing with here, Tommy?” He puts an arm around Tommy’s shoulder and leans in, adding a little quieter: “I’m pretty sure he hates you the least out of any of us, so maybe you have a better chance of getting through to him. You think you could make him leave?”</p><p>Tommy frowns. “A-and go where? He can’t go back to the, the, the… Black Mesa… N-North Wing dorms anymore.”</p><p>“North Wing <em>dorms</em>? Did you just make that up, or is that actually a <em>thing</em>?”</p><p>“It <em>was</em> a thing,” Tommy insists. “And you can look that up on the company wiki! I-if it still works… But it’s definitely not an OSHA compliant area anymore. If it’s not overrun by aliens, it’s probably been taken over by the military.”</p><p>Just then, Gordon can’t help but notice that a grin wide enough to put the Grinch to shame starts spreading across Benrey’s face very, very slowly.</p><p>“Oh, worm? It’s not safe to go back?” Benrey leans back, nonchalantly crossing one leg over the other. “Aw, what a bummer. Sounds like I’m gonna need a place to stay, huh? Friend.”</p><p>Gordon can feel all of his sweat glands simultaneously kick into high gear.</p><p>“No,” he declares, from the bottom of his heart. “I’m not— <em>no</em>. I know <em>exactly</em> what you’re thinking, and I’m telling you now, it is <em>not</em> gonna happen. No.”</p><p>It’s too fucking cursed to even consider. He doesn’t even wanna name it.</p><p>Tommy laces his fingers together anxiously. “That’s actually kind of w-what I came here to talk about. It’d only be a— a temporary arrangement…”</p><p>After everything they’ve been through together, Gordon really does love and respect Tommy, especially for his genuinely kind heart. That said, he’s never understood or approved of the infinite patience Tommy seems to have for Benrey’s bullshit.</p><p>“No,” he repeats. “Over my dead fucking body! <em>Literally</em>. I’m gonna go find a shovel, I’m gonna ask him to leave, and if he <em>doesn’t</em>, I’m gonna put a dent in his head, and if that doesn’t <em>take</em>, I’m gonna put one in <em>mine</em>.”</p><p>Sternly, Tommy says, “I know you don’t really mean that, Mister Freeman!”, but the way he’s stopped jittering and frozen into place seems to say <em>please don’t</em>, which kind of makes Gordon feel like an asshole. He’s not trying to be a dick, and he’s not cruel by nature, or at least doesn’t think of himself as such. It’s just—</p><p>“Look,” Gordon sighs. “If it were you, or Bubby, or Doctor Coomer, or <em>literally anyone else</em>, I’d be willing to hear you out on this. And I know I owe you a debt I can <em>never</em> fully repay for having my back when no one else would. But it’s <em>Benrey</em>.”</p><p>Benrey hugs a throw pillow to his chest.</p><p>“He’s our friend.” For a man in his late thirties, Tommy sure can pull off the puppy eyes when he wants to. “We should show him some compassion in his— his time of need.”</p><p>“Compassion? For the guy who got my hand cut off?”</p><p>“F-for the guy we <em>killed</em> yesterday, Mister Freeman.”</p><p>“But he didn’t <em>die!</em>”</p><p>“Not for lack of tryin’, that’s for sure,” Benrey mutters, piling more pillows around himself.</p><p>Gordon isn’t anywhere near that easily guilt tripped, especially by – and he <em>really</em> can’t overstate this – the asshole who <em>got his hand cut off. </em>But he has to admit it does let a <em>little</em> bit of air out of his righteous indignation.</p><p>He’s not done arguing his case to Tommy, though. “But why does it have to be <em>my</em> house? Why can’t he stay at your place? Or Doctor Coomer’s? Or Bubby’s?”</p><p>“Well, we <em>all</em> lived at the dorms, not just Benrey, so… I’m staying at my dad’s place for now…” Tommy wrings his hands. “Bubby and Doctor Coomer are sharing a hotel room, I think.”</p><p>Huh. Surprising as that is, it doesn’t escape Gordon’s notice that Tommy’s definitely burying the lede there.</p><p>“We can get a hotel room for Benrey, too,” he says. “If we all chip in— hell, I’ll find a way to pay for it myself, if that’s what it takes—”</p><p>“You should probably keep a real close eye on me,” Benrey oh-so-casually interrupts, scratching at his nose within the wall of pillows he’s constructed around himself. “Make sure I don’t turn into a big scary monster again or sum’n.”</p><p>Tommy claps his hands together. “Ah! T-that’s right! We don’t know what long-term effects the Resonance Cascade might have on him!” Tommy hugs himself, as though feeling cold. “Who knows what might happen if he— if we don’t have him under constant surveillance!”</p><p>God, this isn’t happening, is it? This can’t be happening.</p><p>Gordon grabs Tommy by his upper arms and shakes him just enough to drive his point home. “And if he <em>does</em> turn into a monster? What am I supposed to <em>do</em> about that, Tommy?”</p><p>Tommy hesitates, fiddling with the sleeves of his jacket.</p><p>Benrey suggests, “Kiss it better?”</p><p>“We’ll figure something out if it comes to that,” Tommy concludes. “M-maybe it’s true what they say a-about a— a watched pot never boiling?”</p><p>“Christ alive, you’re really set on this, aren’t you? You’re really gonna cash in that favor for <em>this</em>, Tommy? For fucking <em>Benrey</em>?”</p><p>Tommy nods emphatically.</p><p>Gordon turns to glare at the impenetrable mountain fortress of throw pillows on the couch. “You motherfucker. You’re really gonna do me like this, Benrey? You’re just gonna—” <em>Stay</em>, he doesn’t say. “Squat in my house now? Fucking <em>haunt</em> me for the foreseeable future?”</p><p>“Huh?” The mound of pillows shifts a little, just enough to send the topmost layer sliding off of his face. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”</p><p>“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you, you sick fuck?”</p><p>Benrey shrugs. “I can have a lil’ revenge, as a treat.”</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>After Tommy and Sunkist have abandoned Gordon to his fate, Gordon makes Benrey sit down in the kitchen to lay down some ground rules.</p><p>Not that he thinks any of this is ever gonna work, obviously. It’s only a matter of time before it all blows up in his face. It’s just that he’d like to <em>pretend</em> it won’t for as long as he possibly can, thanks.</p><p>Gordon’s first instinct is to write a multi-page contract with elaborate contingencies for every imaginable outcome of this extremely doomed endeavor. But what the fuck would be the point of that? Even if his imagination could match Benrey’s seemingly endless capacity for chaos (and he already knows from experience that it can’t, not even remotely), the obvious outcome of that would be Benrey forgetting, or pretending to forget, anything that elaborate. So it’s best to keep the rules simple, and to start with the one he cares about the most.</p><p>Even dogs can count to four. Four rules is, probably, hopefully, doable.</p><p>“Okay, rule number one: absolutely no violence or otherwise dangerous shit, <em>especially</em> towards me or anyone in my house.” To make it absolutely crystal clear, Gordon adds, like he would to a child: “No hurting people, okay?”</p><p>“Yeah, fine, no hurty,” Benrey says, rolling his eyes.</p><p>“Rule number two: I’d prefer it if you just didn’t touch my stuff at all, but if you <em>have</em> to? Anything you break or lose, you replace.”</p><p>“Cool. No touchy.”</p><p>“Rule number three: don’t freak out my neighbors or anyone else who might come by with your eldritch horror bullshit. I like living here, and I’d like to <em>keep</em> living here, so to that end, I need you to keep a low profile.” He pauses for effect, because this one probably won’t go down easily. “And that includes no SweetVoice.”</p><p>“Aw, what the hell, man..!”</p><p>“No, I <em>know</em>. I get that the SweetVoice is important to you.” For some reason? “But it just draws way too much attention, man. We don’t want cops or the military snooping around here because someone called in the SweetVoice bubbles as a UFO sighting or whatever.”</p><p>Dejected, Benrey mutters, “Damn, bro… No spoopy, I guess…”</p><p>After that, the ideas don’t come to Gordon as easily as the first three. What else? Gordon’s pretty sure he’s already straining Benrey’s attention span. How the fuck is he gonna cover all the bases with this last one without being too vague to make it count?</p><p>Gordon runs his hands through his hair. “Okay. Number four. Don’t… Uh, don’t lie to me, I guess? No bullshit in general.”</p><p>Benrey does not repeat after him.</p><p>Not a great sign.</p><p>“I guess what I mean by that,” Gordon clarifies, “is that you don’t have to— like, you don’t gotta <em>tell</em> me things. You can be as— as mysterious and inscrutable as you want, and if there are things you don’t wanna share, I can live with that.” Hopefully. “All I ask is that you don’t <em>make shit up</em>. Alright?”</p><p>No response.</p><p>“I really do need you to agree to that, so.” Gordon waves his hand a few times in front of Benrey’s dazed eyes, snapping his fingers a few times for good measure. “Hey. Earth to Benrey?”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Rule number four, no bullshit?”</p><p>Benrey blows his cheeks out and grimaces like he’s being asked to come in on a Saturday. “Ughhhhh. Fine. No bullshit.”</p><p>“Great. Thanks. Uh, just to make sure you still remember them, could you list all four for me, please?”</p><p>“All four what?”</p><p>“The— the rules. The four rules we <em>just</em> talked about.”</p><p>He bats his eyes like the very picture of innocence. “What rules?”</p><p>Alright. If that’s how they’re gonna do this.</p><p>Gordon crowds Benrey up against the wall behind his chair and slams his arms against the wall, bracketing the shorter man in between them. He leans in very close, using his taller height and wider frame to loom over him; with barely any distance between them, Benrey can’t exactly pretend he’s not paying attention.</p><p>In his least amused voice, Gordon hisses: “Hey, Benrey? I need you to understand that this isn’t a fucking joke to me. Black Mesa may have been your turf, but I’m not gonna let you walk all over me in my own fucking house. If you’re going to insist on being an asshole while you’re he—”</p><p>Benrey pecks him on the very tip of his nose.</p><p>Gordon slowly counts to ten in his mind as he waits for the heat of humiliation to dissipate from his face. It’s either that, or he’ll have to resort to trying to choke the life out of his immortal houseguest, and that’s obviously not gonna get them anywhere.</p><p>Benrey’s dark eyes have the glint of unimpressed amusement. The barest hint of a smirk is tugging up one corner of his mouth.</p><p>He licks his lips.</p><p>Gordon’s never noticed before, but now that he’s this close, it’s almost like Benrey has— too many teeth? Or maybe the normal amount, but they’re the wrong shape? Too sharp? Too big? Too small? No. Too <em>something</em>. Gordon’s fully aware of how openly he’s gawping now, but he’s never leaned up to someone’s face and had such an immediate and vivid mental image of having his throat torn out with a single bite before.</p><p>Somehow, against all sense of self-preservation, he keeps forgetting that this smug fucking <em>rent-a-cop</em> in front of him is not just a menace in terms of personality, but also in the abstract sense of being some kind eldritch trickster god he probably shouldn’t be trying his fucking luck with.</p><p><em>I’m doing this for Tommy</em>, Gordon reminds himself, not for the first time and abso-fucking-lutely not for the last. <em>Do it for Tommy.</em></p><p>“Look, this is really important to me,” he pleads. “I know we’re not friends and I <em>know</em> you don’t give a shit, but if you’re capable of anything that even <em>remotely</em> resembles pity, <em>please</em>, the fucking <em>rules</em>, Benrey, so I can move on to pretending this isn’t happening, and you can get back to tormenting me until I finally crack and pop myself.”</p><p>To his credit, Benrey doesn’t grin at him, or laugh, or pout.</p><p>“No hurty.” He smacks his lips repeatedly, as though tasting the concept itself. “No touchy, no spoopy?”</p><p> </p><p>“Don’t like that one.”</p><p>“Yeah, well. I don’t like bullshit.” Gordon backs away and leans against his kitchen counter, rubbing at his temples. Something tells him stress headaches are going to be a pretty much permanent presence in his life from now on. “Come on, meet me halfway here.”</p><p>“Can I have rules too?”</p><p>Gordon narrows his eyes. “That depends. You gonna respect mine?”</p><p>Benrey lets out an extended <em>uhhhhh</em> in the unmistakable, universal tone of an indecisive motherfucker wasting everyone else’s time at the register of a fast food joint.</p><p>Gordon matches the sound with an equally long sigh. Maybe Benrey’ll bother remembering the rules, or at least acknowledging that they even exist, if he has some of his own to enforce?</p><p>“Fine. You can have four. <em>Tops</em>. And if any of them even tangentially involve passports, so help me <em>god</em>—”</p><p>“Number one, no hurty.”</p><p>Huh. It’s kind of a relief that the first one’s so easy to stick to, and reasonable to boot. Gordon’ll be the first to admit that that shit back in Black Mesa got <em>way</em> out of hand; it’s not like he normally goes around shooting or crowbaring anyone, aliens or otherwise. “Uh, sure. Of course, man, I’m not gonna hurt anyone.”</p><p>“Talkin’ about you, bro.”</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Oh, right.</p><p>There’s probably not a single person on the planet who could claim to be proficient at reading Benrey and his various blank stares, and Gordon doesn’t think of himself as even a novice at that particular skill. But maybe – and Gordon’s just guessing here – maybe this is him actually not fucking around for once?</p><p>If he’s even capable of that. Because really, what does Gordon know about the inner life of someone, or some<em>thing</em>, like Benrey? It’s hard to imagine this being the one of the very few things Benrey might actually feel any kind of way about, even if he <em>is</em> wasting one of his four rules on…</p><p>This.</p><p>“That was just a joke, man.” God, he’s such a bad liar. “You don’t have to, um.”</p><p><em>To worry about me,</em> he almost says, and immediately feels like a self-absorbed jackass for even briefly entertaining the idea that his wellbeing could be enough of a priority to Benrey that he could be <em>worried</em>.</p><p>In his defense, he’d only meant the stuff about the shovel and the self-popping a <em>little</em> bit. Which, okay, would’ve still been a shitty thing for him to say to or about anyone else, but it’s <em>Benrey</em>, right? Who gives a fuck? <em>He</em> doesn’t.</p><p>And anyway, Benrey doesn’t need to know about the shit that goes on inside his head. It’s not like Gordon can credit him with <em>all</em> of it.</p><p>Gordon clears his throat. “I can do that.”</p><p>“Two, don’t touch my stuff.” Benrey puts his hood up and yanks on the strings, hiding not just his hair but most of his face, too. From the small opening he’s left for his mouth and nose, he says, “Gotta know where my stuff is.”</p><p>As far as Gordon can tell, the entirety of Benrey’s ‘stuff’ consists of the clothes he’s wearing and literally nothing else. And while it’s possible that Gordon might start finding more of Benrey’s stuff around the house, it’s not like Benrey’s gonna be staying long enough to have time to accumulate a lot of it. All in all, it’s another easy one to agree to.</p><p>“Okay. Done. Whatever.”</p><p>“Three. No, um… Locks.”</p><p>“No <em>locks</em>?”</p><p>“Yeah. Or like... Cuffs? Zip ties? Cages? That stuff. Don’t do that.”</p><p>Gordon crosses his arms, instinctively suspicious of where this is going. “Why would I try to <em>cage</em> you? What would that even do? I’ve seen you go through solid objects and change size and shape at will, and I’m pretty sure you have, like, super strength? And fucking <em>skeleton powers</em>? Wouldn’t you just—”</p><p>“You can’t.” Benrey’s hands ball up into fists at his sides. “You gotta promise no locks, or I’m not agreeing to any of <em>your</em> dumb rules. I’m—” He quickly scans the room around him with his eyes and spots the front yard through the window. “I’m gonna take a dump in your mailbox if you don’t promise. I’ll— I’ll fuckin’ do it, bro. I’ll take a dump in all the places, on all your favorite— uh, stuff—”</p><p>Wow, touchy subject. None of Gordon’s business, of course, and not a problem, seeing as it’d be futile anyway.</p><p>“Fine! Jesus. No locks!”</p><p>The last one Benrey seems to need a moment to come up with.</p><p>“Uhh. Four, no yelly.”</p><p>Funnily enough, this one actually might be the hardest one of them all.</p><p>Gordon snorts. “I’m gonna say this up front, I honestly don’t know if I can commit to that one. I’m kind of a loud guy.”</p><p>“Yeah, I bet.”</p><p>He blinks. “What?”</p><p>“Maybe think about what you yell at me, though? Idiot?”</p><p>Despite the unnecessary jab at the end, he has to admit that that’s neither a big ask, nor an unfair one, necessarily – provided he behaves. Again, it’s just <em>Benrey</em>, but...</p><p>
  <em>If it’ll help me pretend all of this is normal?</em>
</p><p>“I’ll— I’ll try. I’ll <em>think</em> about it. Is that good enough for you?”</p><p>Benrey puts his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. “S’all I’m askin’.”</p><p>“Okay. So, no… Hurty,” Gordon revises. “No touching your stuff, no locks or whatever, and <em>less</em> yelling. That about cover it?”</p><p>They shake hands on it – or Gordon does, and Benrey lets him. Gordon makes a mental note to write all this down and put it up somewhere highly visible, just in case Benrey’s gonna try any bullshit and ‘forget’ the rules. Maybe on the fridge? Like a preschooler’s art project.</p><p>Speaking of which.</p><p>“This isn’t like an extra rule or whatever, so you don’t get a fifth one,” he says, and nods towards the living room. “But the second bedroom is my son Joshua’s room, and I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mess it up. Probably useless to even ask, but—”</p><p>“Oh, yeah? Where he at, then?”</p><p>From the way Benrey haughtily lifts his chin, Gordon gathers that this is, at least in Benrey’s own head, a challenge. Or bait of some kind.</p><p>Gordon is <em>not</em> in the mood to bite. “He hasn’t moved in yet. The adoption agency couldn’t give me an exact ETA, but it’s probably gonna be something like a few more weeks to a couple months.”</p><p>Or so he hopes. It has definitely crossed his mind by now that if all the shit that went down in Black Mesa were to see the light of day and be connected to him, that would <em>complicate</em> things, to put it mildly.</p><p>Not that having an immortal lunatic around from now on isn’t already a pretty significant complication in itself, but he’ll burn that bridge when he gets to it. For now, this is all damage control.</p><p>Benrey says, “So you don’t actually have a kid.”</p><p>“<em>Yet</em>,” Gordon stresses. “Don’t be a dick about this, Benrey. I’m putting my foot down. Joshua’s off-limits.”</p><p>“I’m not trying to, man, calm down.” Benrey cracks the door to Joshua’s room open and starts openly rubbernecking from the doorway, checking out the crib in more than one sense of the word — but at least he doesn’t step inside, which is a small relief. “B— uh, but how does that work? You’re just gonna… Find? A kid. And keep it?”</p><p>Gordon spends a moment evaluating how much time and energy it would take to explain the concept of an adoption to someone who thinks ‘a bit shit’ is an acceptable way to describe someone else’s son to their face.</p><p>Then another moment contemplating how much time and energy he’s <em>willing</em> to invest in that.</p><p>“Yes,” he says.</p><p>“Nice.”</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>It’s almost midnight when Gordon finally accepts that it’s time to give up on waiting for Bubby and Doctor Coomer to drop by.</p><p>The entire time – and that really does mean the <em>entire</em> time – Benrey stares at him.</p><p>A few hours in, Gordon finally cracks and snaps, “Don’t you have anything better to do?”</p><p>“Without pawin’ at your stuff?”</p><p>Gordon has no retort to that, and doesn’t bring it up anymore.</p><p>The living room couch isn’t the pull-out kind, or otherwise designed for people to regularly sleep on, but it’s either that or the floor. Being a gracious host by nature, even for rat fucks like Benrey, Gordon sets it up as comfy as he can, nicer sheets and all.</p><p>Benrey just <em>looks</em> at it, the same way he’s been <em>looking at</em> Gordon.</p><p>If it’s not up to his standards, it’s not Gordon’s problem. <em>None</em> of this is his problem. He’s doing this for Tommy, not for Benrey.</p><p>He brushes his teeth, puts the lights out, and goes to bed.</p><p>Then gets up to turn the lights back on.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Week 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I've looked at this chapter for so long that I've become effectively blind to it, so please let me know if there are broken sentences or other weird inconsistencies.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bubby rubs at his chin in front of the fridge.</p><p>“The rules are reasonable enough, I suppose,” he says. He leans closer to inspect it with a sneer. “But why is there macaroni on it? You’re both adults, for god’s sake.”</p><p>“Easier for Gordon’s stupid ass to remember,” Benrey says, tapping at his temple with his index finger.</p><p>“That’s not why,” Gordon says offhandedly. And that’s about all he can say on that, because he can’t just <em>no you</em> him, even though that <em>is</em> actually why.</p><p>Because unlike certain other people, he’s an adult, you see. And busy putting the final touches on the salad. And fully committed to ignoring the elephant in the room.</p><p>Also? Barely awake.</p><p>“Checks out,” Bubby says, nodding thoughtfully. “He <em>can</em> be pretty dense at times.”</p><p>Doctor Coomer pokes his head in through the patio door. “Gordon, would you be kind enough to come help me bring these in, please?”</p><p>As they’re piling ridiculous amounts of food off of the grill and onto two insufficiently large trays, Doctor Coomer says, all hushed and friendly: “Are you quite alright, Gordon? If you don’t mind my asking.”</p><p>What the fuck is he supposed to say to that? He doesn’t even <em>remember</em> what ‘alright’ feels like. He’s been home for roughly a week, and has only slept for maybe fifteen, sixteen-ish hours in that entire time. And there is no way he’s gonna ruin this perfectly pleasant impromptu BBQ gathering slash heist planning session by turning it into his personal therapy appointment.</p><p>“I’m okay.” Every time he lies about it, it gets easier. “I guess I didn’t sleep that well last night. Why do you ask?”</p><p>“You just seem a little, ah, under the weather. More so than usual. I do hope your guest hasn’t been giving you a hard time..?”</p><p>That’s sort of the issue. Gordon can grit his teeth and push through a hard time when he knows he has a shot at landing on his feet at the other end of it. He doesn’t know what the <em>fuck</em> this is, or for how long, but it’s not hard, per se. Alarmingly easy, more like.</p><p>Gordon hasn’t seen Benrey eat, unless he makes him, and he hasn’t seen him sleep, even when he <em>does</em> make him. (A trust thing, maybe? If so, the feeling’s mutual, obviously.) Benrey doesn’t even go out unless Gordon does – and Gordon doesn’t, except to take out the delivery food boxes that are starting to pile up. He keeps waiting for Benrey to make fun of him for it, a variety of excuses always on the tip of his tongue in anticipation of the moment it finally comes up.</p><p>It doesn’t.</p><p>Contrary to every expectation Gordon’d had of how this would go, Benrey doesn’t really say much. He doesn’t <em>do</em> much, either. By the time Gordon wakes up, Benrey’s always already awake. When Gordon goes to bed and pretends to sleep, he never really stops hearing object collision sounds and muted shuffling around from the next room over. In between, Benrey just lurks around the house, trailing along behind Gordon like a lost puppy.</p><p>Even now, Benrey’s seated in the one corner of the kitchen that has direct line of sight to Gordon’s backyard through the living room window, single-mindedly tracking Gordon with his gaze while having a conversation with Bubby. Or while Bubby’s having a conversation at Benrey’s general direction, from the looks of it.</p><p>Kinda pisses him off that seeing the two of them talking in private still gives him an instinctual feeling of dread. Like he should be watching his back.</p><p>“It just feels like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Gordon says.</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“I don’t know. I guess… Like, when am I going to get my life back? Or is this just what my life <em>is</em> now?”</p><p>Doctor Coomer’s expression softens. “Gordon, it’s perfectly normal to need time to re-adjust after going through a harrowing experience. Especially one as traumatic as the Resonance Cascade.”</p><p>“Yeah? <em>You</em> seem to be doing alright, Doctor Coomer.”</p><p>He practically beams with joy and vigor. “Correct! I’m as fit as a fiddle, and more powerful than I’ve ever been! But, ah, between you and me…” He leans in secretively and lowers his voice. “I <em>may</em> have punched poor Doctor Bubby’s lights out on the first night because I mistook him for one of my clones in the dark.”</p><p>Gordon huffs. “I guess we all came out of Black Mesa with some extra baggage, huh?”</p><p>“Indeed! Would you like to talk about yours?”</p><p>On the other side of the window, his baggage finally breaks eye contact with him and turns to look at Bubby, narrowing his eyes in annoyance.</p><p>As much as Gordon definitely didn’t <em>enjoy</em> any part of being trapped in Black Mesa and couldn’t be forced to go back there at gunpoint, on some no doubt deeply damaged level he misses how instinctive and straightforward the whole survival aspect of it all was. If it’s dangerous, shoot at it. If it’s friendly, point your gun away. If it’s neither, keep moving.</p><p>If it’s both? <em>Move in together, apparently.</em></p><p>“I don’t know what the <em>fuck</em> I’m doing,” Gordon confesses. “And I don’t wanna get into it, but I’m not talking about the fucking dinner.”</p><p>Doctor Coomer chuckles. “Well. Whatever happens next, you’ve certainly made it through worse, haven’t you, Gordon?”</p><p>“Have I? Really? Have I?”</p><p>“I have every faith you’re up to the task. And I’m sure Tommy wouldn’t have asked you to do this in the first place if he didn’t feel the same way.” He extends one of his mechanical arms out and balances the tray of various stacked meats and veggies on it with what seems like no effort at all. His smile alters a little. “Though I do now realize that it was perhaps inconsiderate of us to spring all this on you so suddenly. You certainly have a lot on your plate right now, even without a quadruple heist coming up.”</p><p>Gordon shakes his head. “Oh, trust me, I am <em>itching</em> to shoot some boot boys right now. It’s gonna be cathartic as hell.”</p><p>That earns him an amicable clap on the shoulder and a hearty cackle. “That’s the spirit! Shall we?”</p><p>“You go on ahead, Doctor Coomer,” Gordon mutters. “I’ll be there in a sec.”</p><p>Doctor Coomer slips in through the patio door. In the brief moment it’s open, Gordon can hear Bubby’s voice, mid-rant: “—least <em>try</em>, you dumbass! Don’t you think he deserves to know?”</p><p>Benrey looks directly at Gordon through the cracked door and says, “Nope."</p><p>“Bubby, dear, a word?” Doctor Coomer calls out, and then the door clicks behind him and all is quiet again.</p><p>
  <em>It’s not that hard. Just go in. Make small talk. Be normal.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You used to be good at normal.</em>
</p><p>By the time Gordon pulls his shit together and drags his ass back inside, Tommy’s finally made it back with the drinks – late, as he’d predicted.</p><p>“They always insist on getting the m-manager to double check my ID,” Tommy sighs as they’re all taking seat around the dinner table. “Look at this hairline! Do I really look like I’m under 21?”</p><p>“Looks don’t necessarily mean anything,” Bubby says. “I’ve been bald and wrinkly since the day I was born.”</p><p>Gordon would point out that that’s just how babies <em>do</em>, but he’s kind of distracted by the frankly ambitious stack of steaks Bubby’s piling onto his plate. He’s looking forward to finding out if Bubby’s really gonna eat them all – not out of a lack of faith in his appetite, but simply in terms of <em>volume</em>.</p><p>“Gordon has gray hair even though he’s baby,” Benrey adds, taking yet another long swig out of his bottle of garlic salad dressing. Every time he talks, it’s like a breath weapon Gordon has to lean away from or die immediately.</p><p>“I don’t,” Gordon protests, more by reflex than out of actual annoyance. Too numb with fatigue to get wound up. “I’m not. I’m 27.”</p><p>Before Gordon even realizes he’s doing it, Benrey reaches out to pluck a hair off of Gordon’s head. With a grin, he presents it for all to see.</p><p>Oh, goddamnit. That’s gray, alright.</p><p>“Stress’ll do that to you,” Bubby says knowingly. “You’re kind of a worrywart, Gordon. You should try drugs, they’ll mellow you out a little.”</p><p>“It could also be the result of all that radioactive waste we were exposed to in Black Mesa,” Doctor Coomer cheerfully suggests. “Or the experimental energy weapons. Or Doctor Darnold’s top secret mutagen cocktail. Or the lack of proper nutrients in a Gatorade-based diet. Or—”</p><p>He goes on for a while with his laundry list of things that definitely should’ve killed at least Gordon if not all of them by now. Which isn’t really necessary; Gordon’s already <em>terrifyingly</em> aware that he’s living on borrowed time, thanks.</p><p>Tommy seems to pick up on his unease, because he hands Gordon a beer and says, talking over Doctor Coomer: “Don’t worry, Mister Freeman. I-it just makes you look more distinguished.”</p><p>Not necessarily a look people in their twenties generally aspire to, but Gordon appreciates the sentiment, if nothing else. He accepts the beer with a thankful nod.</p><p>“I’m not as worried about how I look as I am about my health,” he admits. “I wanna be there for my kid for as long as possible, you know? He’s way too young to have to lose his dad.”</p><p>
  <em>Again.</em>
</p><p>“Oh, I’m sure that won’t be a concern for you,” Bubby says, in that off-handed and overly pleasant way that always signals particularly juicy drama. “Will it, Benrey?”</p><p>Gordon frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”</p><p>“I dunno what he’s talking about,” Benrey drawls. Judging by the proud disdain in his voice, Gordon is immediately one hundred percent certain he does. “Crazy old man…”</p><p>“I’m just saying, you should ask Benrey about—”</p><p>Bubby interrupts himself with a hoarse yelp as Benrey kicks him under the table.</p><p>“Hey! No fighting, or you’re not getting dessert,” Gordon snaps. “What the fuck are you guys talking about?”</p><p>“That’s classified information,” Benrey states, ponderously dumping soda-drenched salad into his mouth. The way he handles utensils, Gordon has discovered, doesn’t really look anything like eating, and actually kind of reminds Gordon of an excavator at work on a dig site. He’s yet to figure out if Benrey’s just fucking with him, or if he actually doesn’t know how to do it any other way.</p><p>Bubby rubs at his shin with a pained grimace. “But <em>why</em>, you dumbass? What harm could telling him possibly do at this point?”</p><p>“Yo, what about <em>you</em>, huh?” Benrey bites off and chews on the head off his spoon with the same ease a normal person would with a piece of lettuce – mouth open, of course, because as far as Gordon can tell, Benrey hasn’t ever even <em>heard of </em>table manners. “Don’t you think you have something to, uh… Something to share with the rest of the class, Bubby? With someone in this room? Been keeping a lil’— a dirty lil’ secret, haven’t you!”</p><p>Bubby stands up abruptly and slams his hands on the table, toppling over both his chair and his precarious tower of steak. “Bitch, I will <em>end</em> you.”</p><p>Gordon should probably intervene. Right? Even if it <em>is</em> a little funny to see Benrey get under someone else’s skin for a change.</p><p>“You wanna go?” Benrey leans back on his chair and spits out a warped chunk of stainless steel onto the dinner table. “You wanna 1v1 me, grandpa?”</p><p>Needing no further invitation, Bubby starts climbing onto the kitchen table, fists balled up and… Steaming?</p><p>Doctor Coomer stands up as well, although in a much more calm and measured manner, and firmly catches Bubby by the nape of his turtleneck. “Now, now, Professor Bubby…”</p><p>Bubby spins around to frown at Doctor Coomer. “<em>Doctor</em> Bubby,” he insists.</p><p>But he does also sit back down, albeit glaring daggers at the smug cloud of garlic sitting across from him.</p><p>Gordon pinches the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what the fuck that was, but if we’re gonna do this in my house, I need y’all to play nice, okay? Bubby, don’t antagonize Benrey. Even a piece of shit like him is entitled to his privacy. Benrey, you’re not gonna 1v1 Bubby. Don’t make me tap the macaroni art. Doctor Coomer…” He hides his mouth from the others’ view with the back of his hand and mouths <em>thank you</em> with as many exclamation points as he knows how to convey without sound.</p><p>Tommy sighs in exasperation. “You guys, this is dumb. I’d like to get back to— to start planning the heist now. We’re gonna need like a— a tech guy, right? Every heist needs a tech guy.”</p><p>“I could be tech guy,” Benrey says.</p><p>Gordon and Tommy shout <em>no</em> pretty much simultaneously.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>They agree on a team and a plan. Gordon’s not particularly thrilled about the prospect of having to double as Doctor Darnold’s guinea pig for his unorthodox idea on how to pig-proof their heist communications, but as Tommy points out, it’s hard to argue with the results of his mad science when they’ve literally saved his life before.</p><p>By sundown, after everyone’s gone home, Gordon’s gotta admit he feels a little— well. <em>Calmer</em> is not the word when you’re looking forward to committing several counts of armed robbery and a whole lotta cruelty to pigs in a few days’ time. But his belly and heart are comfortably full, and his home, now an absolute mess of food stains, dog hair, and various blueprints, looks pleasantly lived-in for once. He’s always felt vaguely unsatisfied with the stillness of his home to begin with, and while he <em>has</em> recently learned to appreciate that quiet usually equals safe, it also reminds him of the empty, sterile-looking spaces and infinitely sprawling hallways of Black Mesa.</p><p>So a little mess is more than welcome.</p><p>As he goes about the house doing a little cursory cleaning and arranging, it’s a little alarming to realize that he’s already begun to tune out those footsteps that follow him everywhere the same way he’s practically deaf to the steady hum of his busted old AC unit, the intermittent howling of his laptop, and all the other ambient noises of his home. Which should be a red flag, right? He should know better by now. It’s barely been a week since the Resonance Cascade. As a general rule, circumstances may change drastically in a week’s time, but <em>people</em> do not. And if anything, the extremely sus dinner argument between Bubby and Benrey was a fresh reminder that he should never let his guard down around Benrey.</p><p>Gordon puts the last of the knives in the dishwasher, gathers his thoughts, and turns around to face Benrey where he’s prone across the newly cleared kitchen table. Head and limbs hanging limp over the sides where he’s too tall for it, perfectly still, and eyes wide open, he kind of looks like a dead body on a gurney.</p><p>Gordon clears his throat. “So, you wanna tell me what that argument earlier was all about, Benrey?”</p><p>Very slowly, Benrey lifts his head up. “You shouldn’t be asking me that.”</p><p>“No? ‘Cause Bubby seemed pretty convinced that you have some kinda insider knowledge on how long I’m gonna be around. You don’t think that’s something I should know?”</p><p>
  <em>Deserve, even?</em>
</p><p>Benrey sneers. “I don’t have to tell you anything. Check da ‘Roni Rules.”</p><p>In hindsight, it might’ve been a mistake to give Benrey explicit permission to plead the fifth to any question Gordon might ever want to ask him.</p><p>“Yeah, I know you don’t <em>have</em> to,” Gordon allows, already running thin on patience. “You do realize Bubby’s just gonna keep holding that over you indefinitely, though, right? You really wanna let him have that kinda leverage?”</p><p>Benrey blinks at him, sneer fading into a confused stare.</p><p>He looks off to the side and opens his mouth a few times, but nothing comes out.</p><p>
  <em>Whatever it is, either it really fucking bothers him to talk about it, or he doesn’t know how.</em>
</p><p>“Well?”</p><p>“Shut up, I’m thinking. You know 20 Questions?”</p><p>“What, the game? Yeah, I’m aware of it. Why?”</p><p>“Let’s do that.”</p><p>It’s never that simple with him, is it? “You want me to <em>guess</em> what the fuck you’re talking about.”</p><p>“I don’t, but… You stood up for me, so. You can, if you wanna.”</p><p>It takes Gordon a moment to process what <em>stood up for me</em> is in reference to.</p><p>Huh. Telling Bubby to leave Benrey alone because he didn’t them to demolish his house by getting into some DBZ shit during a superhuman catfight <em>would</em> come across like he’s taking Benrey’s side, wouldn’t it?</p><p>
  <em>Definitely don’t wanna get too used to doing that, either.</em>
</p><p>“I’ll give it a shot,” he says. “Could you get off the table for this?”</p><p>“No. You can’t do a dare in 20 Questions. Stick to the rules, please.”</p><p>Off to a great start. Mentally steeling himself for a bad time, Gordon lies down on his back on the kitchen floor and slides himself towards the space under the dinner table until he’s at least sort of face to face with Benrey.</p><p>Now that he’s down there, looking up at Benrey gives Gordon a rush of nostalgia. It reminds him of being a kid, when his brother would peek down over the side of the top bunk and they’d whisper stories to each other in the dark, simply out of the rebellious joy of keeping each other awake past bedtime.</p><p>He folds his arms under his head and tries to get comfortable. “Alright. Do I at least get a hint? Like what it’s related to, or—”</p><p>“Nope,” Benrey says, emphatically popping the P.</p><p>“Not even a small one? Jesus, okay.” Gordon spends a moment thinking about an angle to approach this. What was the context of Bubby bringing it up? Black Mesa, gray hair, Joshua, dying. “Alright. Uh… I assume it’s something you don’t want me to know, right?”</p><p>Benrey frowns. “More like something <em>you</em> don’t wanna know.”</p><p>“What? Why would—?”</p><p>“My turn,” Benrey interrupts. The dinner table creaks a little as he uses his hands to pull himself closer to the table’s edge, eyes wide with curiosity. “Are you guys really gonna rob a bank? I dunno, that sounds pretty dangerous to me, bro…”</p><p>Asif he hadn’t been present for the entire elaborate planning session. He probably knows the heist plan better than Gordon does, given his insomnia-induced brain fog.</p><p>Gordon’s pretty sure this isn’t how you play 20 Questions, either, but that’s not really a hill he wants to die on.</p><p>“And then some, yeah,” Gordon notes dryly. <em>For Tommy</em> has been his personal mantra for the past week, but this one is for Joshua, and Joshua alone. There’s no way of knowing if he’ll want to go to college when he grows up, but if he doesn’t end up going, it will <em>not</em> be on account of his idiot dad being too broke to pay for it after losing what was <em>supposed</em> to be a cushy government job.</p><p>Not that he plans on staying unemployed forever, but that’s still a work in progress.</p><p>Gordon backtracks to his previous train of thought with some effort. “Why would I not wanna know what Bubby was talking about? I <em>do</em> wanna know. I got the impression that whatever he was talking about is good for my general wellbeing on some level. Is that not the case?”</p><p>“Nnnn… Not exactly.” Which, notably, is <em>not exactly</em> a no, but not a yes either. “Why can’t I go with you guys, though! I wanna shoot cops too, please? You could use someone to watch your six…”</p><p>Gordon’s surprised, and maybe even a little bit grateful, that Benrey’s only bringing this up now, and not when the rest of the Science Team was still around. No doubt they would’ve all ganged up on him until he caved in and let Benrey come with.</p><p>“You <em>know</em> why. I’m <em>open</em> about why. You really want me to go through every single reason I don’t like you, item by item? ‘Cause I don’t know if I can stay up long enough to go through the entire thing.” He opts to ignore the way Benrey averts his eyes and clicks his tongue. “Okay, so it’s something I’m unaware of, and something you think I wouldn’t wanna know about. It positively affects my lifespan, but not necessarily my health.” He recalls Bubby’s bitchy tone, the delighted cattiness of it. “Wait, so why does <em>Bubby</em>, of all people, know about it?”</p><p>“’Cause he’s not a complete <em>idiot</em>,” Benrey spits out. “Yo, which one’s your favorite picture of Keanu Reeves?”</p><p>The sheer adrenaline rush of having his brain switch gears from mildly interested to profoundly mortified in two seconds flat has roughly the same psychological effect on Gordon as being woken up in the middle of the night by a fire alarm going off under his pillow.</p><p>He tries to sit up, and immediately slams his head against the bottom of the table with enough force to see stars.</p><p>Judging by the amount of blood he can feel rushing to his face, he’s about as red as a fucking beetroot, and the sore bump already forming on his head is probably gonna grow to around the size of one, too.</p><p>As he crawls out from under the table and stumbles out of the room, swearing under his breath, Benrey calls after him, voice quaking with poorly suppressed laughter, “Oh, how come you don’t wanna play anymore, huh? Lil’— lil’ scaredy-cat?”</p><p>“Fuck you,” Gordon calls back. “And stay the fuck away from my laptop, asshole!”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Week 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Early update to make up for the last one that was late.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The heist goes about as well as it could have for as long as it possibly could’ve. Tommy was, after all, the one with the ammo bags.</p>
<p>In their defense, no amount of planning could have accounted for Tommy needing to be rescued from <em>the fucking White House</em>, of all places.</p>
<p>Gordon’s memories of the first hour or two sort of blend together into a hectic blur of drilling, hacking, and grenade flashes. A couple of mild panic attacks, nothing to worry about. Also, <em>John fucking Wick</em> was there? <em>From the movie John Wick</em>? Or at least the spitting image of him, right down to those mournful hazel eyes? That can’t be right. Exceptionally talented cosplayers probably have better things to do than gatecrashing random bank robberies (like that’s <em>possible</em> and <em>normal)</em>, and <em>definitely</em> have better things to do than aggressively negging Gordon through the entire thing to his great shame (and, to his even greater shame, mild excitement) until finally disappearing just as mysteriously as he’d arrived. If only all of his hallucinations could be so nice.</p>
<p>Anyway, then Benrey showed up, because of course, of <em>course</em> he wouldn’t stay out of it. Of course.</p>
<p>Towards the end of their profoundly doomed rescue mission, there’d been a cacophony of shouting and gunfire, and a suffocating cloud of some type of gas, and then, finally, as everything went dark, a rush of relief over the sweet release of death, mixed with the guilt of not being able to save his friends – and just a dash of disbelief that <em>this</em> was the way they were all gonna die. Not getting eaten by aliens, not bleeding to death, not asphyxiating in the vacuum of space in another dimension. Gassed by boot boys in the White House.</p>
<p>Gordon wakes up at home, in his bed, in his everyday clothes, with nothing to suggest he hadn’t dreamt the whole thing except for the two huge duffel bags next to his bed that are genuinely bulging with cash and a sharp pain in his chest every time he takes a deep breath.</p>
<p>Oh, and his bedroom looks like someone went to fucking town on it with a paintball gun, a cacophony of colors splattered across the walls and ceiling. There’s even some on his clothes and face, beard flecked with bits of teal green that don’t feel like anything between his fingers.</p>
<p>Careful not to exert himself, Gordon drags himself out of bed and into the living room.</p>
<p>With a startle, Benrey slams down the lid of Gordon’s laptop and says, “You’re not allowed to yell.”</p>
<p>Great. Well, that’s one way to quickly dispel the feeling of fondness that was threatening to overtake Gordon.</p>
<p>Rolling his eyes, Gordon collapses onto the couch next to him.</p>
<p>He grabs the remote, turns on the TV, turns up the volume, and watches the news in silence for a bit.</p>
<p>The heists do come up on a few channels in the form of a literally passing mention in the news ticker, but it’s not what anyone’s talking about. It’s a bizarre thing to feel relieved about, but their crimes have apparently been overshadowed by the main event of the day, the headline to dwarf all others:</p>
<p>
  <strong>WHITE HOUSE DESTROYED IN FIRE</strong>
</p>
<p>‘Destroyed’ is the kind of word that people usually use in a hyperbolic way, but judging by the live footage, it’s still a complete understatement. The building hasn’t been ‘charred’ or ‘reduced to rubble’. All that’s left of it is literally just a perfectly level area of scorched earth. No one has any info on a death count yet, but according to sources – whatever or whoever the fuck that means – it’s expected to be in the hundreds, all military personnel who were present for what they’re calling a field training exercise.</p>
<p>Gordon keeps flipping through channels, but none of them mention the Science Team, or the heists, or any civilian casualties. Not a single one is bringing on experts to question how a simple electrical fire could <em>vaporize sandstone</em>.</p>
<p>No foul play suspected.</p>
<p>Benrey drums his fingers against the laptop lid in a restless pattern, iridescent specks of color under his nails catching the light coming off of the TV.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take a theoretical physicist to put two and two together.</p>
<p>Gordon nods towards the live footage of several news crews and firemen standing around the blackened patch of ground with baffled expressions on their faces. “I’m guessing I have you to thank for that.”</p>
<p>“Why do you think that was me?”</p>
<p>He laughs, then winces as a sharp pain shoots throughout his chest. “Really, man? It’s all just a big coincidence that we were there right before the fire started? And you just <em>happened</em> to have a flamethrower with you, huh?”</p>
<p>“It heard it was an electrical fire. Great sad…”</p>
<p>He <em>says</em> that, but he also flashes a cocky grin at the end, so clearly he’s not that invested in being convincing about it.</p>
<p>“Hey, whatever you say, man. You ever meet the guy who did that, tell him I said thanks, alright?” Gordon pats him on the leg with a smirk of his own. “And that I owe him a beer, but I’m only gonna buy him one if he stops trying to creep on my browser history. Did everyone else get out safely?”</p>
<p>“Mm? Yeah, I made sure they got, uh, home.” He grabs the remote back from Gordon and turns off the TV. “I mean, GG and everything, but I hope y’all know you got <em>hard</em> carried.”</p>
<p>“You mean figuratively or literally?” Gordon, in turn, yoinks his PC away from Benrey’s lap while his hands are occupied. “And what the hell happened after we passed out? How’d we even get out of there?”</p>
<p>Benrey clicks his tongue. “Why’s it matter? It’s boring.”</p>
<p>Gordon blinks. “The story about how you somehow single-handedly fucking demolished the White House and saved all our lives is <em>boring</em>? Are you for real, man?”</p>
<p>Benrey crosses his arms petulantly. “It’s <em>soooo</em> fuckin’ boring. Too boring to talk about. I’d just, uhh, fall asleep.” Very pointedly, he glances at the laptop in Gordon’s lap, then at Gordon. “Unless…”</p>
<p>This one isn’t hard to figure out either. But after last week’s Keanu Reeves Incident, it’s the one thing that isn’t even remotely negotiable.</p>
<p>Gordon hugs his laptop protectively. “No. No ‘unless’. The laptop is off limits. Ask for something else and we’ll talk about it.”</p>
<p>Benrey looks around the room curiously, like it’s his first time visiting.</p>
<p>“Yo, you got a PS3 in here somewhere?”</p>
<p>Gordon scratches at his beard. “I don’t… Think so? Sorry. I had to sell a lot of my older consoles a few years ago when I was strapped for cash. I do have a PS4, but it’s not backwards compatible, so if you had a specific PS3 game in mind, I don’t think I can help you, buddy.”</p>
<p>Benrey’s eyes have gone <em>comically</em> wide. Christ, he’s not gonna throw a fit because Gordon doesn’t own a PS3 anymore in the year of our lord 2020, is he?</p>
<p>Visibly upset and voice gone high, Benrey whispers, “You have a PS <em>what</em>?”</p>
<p>Gordon’s already up and gingerly dragging himself over to the TV stand where he keeps his consoles. He takes out the PS4 controller from the bottom drawer and tosses it over to Benrey. “Catch.”</p>
<p>Benrey does. He gently cradles the controller in the palms of his hands like a baby bird, mouth hanging slightly open with something like surprise.</p>
<p>Gordon digs out the console itself from under the tangled mess of cords he keeps telling himself he’ll sort out one of these days and sets it on the floor. “It’s honestly kind of bullshit that the PS5 isn’t backwards compatible, either,” Gordon muses. “Not that it really matters when I missed my chance to preorder one. If you had a PC of your own, I could hook you up with an emulator, but—”</p>
<p>Benrey launches off of the sofa and onto Gordon, wrapping his arms around Gordon in a vice-like grip.</p>
<p>And starts bawling like a baby.</p>
<p>It’s genuinely funny for the first five, maybe ten seconds, even if Gordon doesn’t get where Benrey’s going with this bit he’s doing. ‘Cause it <em>is</em> a bit, isn’t it? Of course it is. It’s gotta be, and the punchline is clearly just about to follow, any second now, and if isn’t something obnoxiously <em>hashtag gamer</em>, it <em>will</em> be on Gordon’s expense, and then Benrey will cackle like a lunatic while Gordon laments all the things that had to go wrong with his life that he keeps ending up in this situation again and again.</p>
<p>Any second now.</p>
<p>Except…</p>
<p>Benrey <em>keeps</em> bawling. Just openly sobbing against Gordon’s left shoulder while Gordon tries to balance out trying not to provoke Benrey by wriggling too much versus trying to lean away from Benrey to relieve the pressure off of his broken rib.</p>
<p>What the fuck is he supposed to <em>do</em>, though? <em>Without</em> risking further upsetting his human-shaped boa constrictor? He’s pretty sure he’s never witnessed this kind of meltdown anywhere that wasn’t a kindergarten or a hospital.</p>
<p><em>Or Black Mesa. Would’ve been nice to have someone there for me when </em>I<em> was going through some shit and freaking out about it.</em></p>
<p>For better or worse, Benrey barely seems to notice his hesitation, or much of anything, really, too absorbed in whatever’s going on in his head that’s making him drench Gordon’s shirt with face fluids to pay attention to him wresting his arms free of Benrey’s hold.</p>
<p>Gordon can’t shake the feeling that he’s being set up for something, but reaches his arms around Benrey and— God, this is so stupid. He is <em>asking</em> to be made fun of for this. He’s giving Benrey basically infinite ammo for insults here. But he begins gently stroking Benrey’s back anyway.</p>
<p>He keeps doing it until Benrey winds down to a sniffle.</p>
<p>It takes a while.</p>
<p>“I’m okay,” Benrey says eventually, voice shaky and muffled by the fabric of Gordon’s hoodie. “I’m a cool. God…”</p>
<p>He does <em>not</em> sound okay. He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself he is, and failing miserably. Which is so fucking bizarre to Gordon; if there’s anything in the world that could make an immortal being with the power to alter reality at his whim break down like this, not having immediate access to a PS3, or whatever the hell it was in that brief exchange that set him off, would not have been his guess.</p>
<p>Gordon clears his throat. “You wanna talk about it?”</p>
<p>Benrey looks up at him, eyes puffy and nose red and eyebrows about as high as they go. “Do I <em>look</em> like I wanna talk about it?”</p>
<p>
  <em>Why the fuck did I ask? Where did I think that was gonna go?</em>
</p>
<p>“I guess not.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, no fff<em>ffucking</em> kidding…” Benrey lifts up the hem of Gordon’s shirt and noisily blows his nose on it before Gordon can stop him.</p>
<p>“Jesus, man. Gross.” Gordon snatches the shirt out of Benrey’s hands and pulls it over his head, seeing as it was already soggy with snot and tears on one side, and hands it over. “You can keep that. You couldn’t go get a tissue like a normal person?”</p>
<p>It’s only when Benrey doesn’t take the shirt from him or say anything in reply that Gordon really processes the fact that they’re still standing less than a foot apart from each other, chest-to-now-bare-chest, and Benrey… Definitely, <em>definitely</em> doesn’t look like he’s gonna start crying again any time soon, at least, gaze appraisingly roaming the area between Gordon’s collarbones and the faint outline of his abs.</p>
<p>
  <em>Is he… Checking me out?</em>
</p>
<p>Some terminally insecure and needy part of him that he wasn’t previously aware even existed wishes he hadn’t given up swimming after college and let himself get so out of shape, and feels his face heat up even further than it already had from how fucking <em>pathetic</em> that thought is.</p>
<p>“Nice,” Benrey comments, voice dripping with amusement as his eyes dip even lower to where the trail of hair on his belly disappears below the waistband of his pants.</p>
<p>Gordon takes a quick step backwards, does a 180 – barely an improvement on his tits-out situation, <em>good job, Gordon, you’re a fucking weirdo, no one wants to see your dad bod, go put that away</em> – and powerwalks into his bedroom to get a replacement shirt.</p>
<p>When Gordon comes back out, face still red all the way up to his ears, Benrey opens his mouth to say something, so Gordon blurts out, “You wanna try out the PS4 or not?”</p>
<p>Benrey closes his mouth.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hours later, Benrey asks, “Do you know if this game sold well?”</p>
<p>It catches Gordon off guard just enough to make him bark a laugh of surprise. “Wh— <em>Skyrim</em>?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. If there’s a mod community for this, I wanna see if they have one that lets me play as a giant. You know, chill by the fire…” Benrey’s voice softens a little. “Pet a mammoth… Paint some rocks… Found Skyrim’s first space program. Eatin’… Cheeeeese, n’ shit.”</p>
<p>“That has to be a thing,” Gordon guesses. He feels something wet in his beard and realizes he’s been drooling; there’s a damp spot on the arm of the couch where he’s been resting his head. “I think I just dozed off for a bit. What time is it?”</p>
<p>“Yooo! Check out these lil’ guys!”</p>
<p>On-screen, Benrey’s Khajiit is crouching down next to a tree stump. He finagles the clunky in-game camera around and finally gets a good close-up on the stump, making it very easy even for Gordon’s crusty eyes to spot two tiny trails of low-res insects crawling over it at a steady pace.</p>
<p>“Ants,” Gordon says, mildly.</p>
<p>“Look!”</p>
<p>“I’m— I’m looking.”</p>
<p>The Khajiit swings her clawed fists at them a few times, but the ants keep on marching forwards, completely unaffected by and oblivious to the senseless violence directed at them.</p>
<p>“I’m pretty sure you can’t interact with them.” Gordon yawns. His limbs feel pleasantly heavy, but he can’t be bothered to drag his ass to his actual bed. “They’re not even NPCs, it’s just a looping texture.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but real ants are so fragile,” Benrey says. “These’re better, right? They’re happier?”</p>
<p>Gordon rests his eyes for a bit.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The next day, Benrey follows through with his end of the bargain.</p>
<p>Over the roar of the lawn mower that he’d <em>emphatically</em> refused to turn off for the sake of their conversation, Benrey yells, “I mean, I can’t die?” Gordon gestures him to continue, and Benrey rolls his eyes. “After your clumsy ass got KO’d, I just tanked all the bullets, rezzed everyone else, lit up anything I didn’t like lookin’ at, and dipped. Coomer used those papers from the vault and said we won’t be seeing any more cops or soldiers.”</p>
<p>The pardons..? Wait, was <em>that</em> what they were getting them for? Is that how it <em>works</em>? Actual, literal, real life Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Cards can’t be a thing. Right? Even if it <em>is</em> hard to imagine that they would’ve been allowed to leave otherwise.</p>
<p>Jesus, he really should’ve been more awake for the planning session. Taken notes or something.</p>
<p>“I thought you said your flamethrower was out of fuel,” Gordon shouts back. “Or ‘hatred’ or whatever.”</p>
<p>“I found more. Duh.”</p>
<p>“From <em>where</em>?”</p>
<p>Benrey shrugs. “They were gonna kill you.”</p>
<p>
  <em>What, and deprive you of the opportunity?</em>
</p>
<p>Thing is, Gordon could’ve sworn they <em>did</em> kill him. He may not have a conscious recollection of that happening, or bullet wounds to show for it, but his body sure as fuck remembers, in the form of twinges and aches under unbroken skin in spots that match with the frankly excessive number of brand-new holes in his HEV suit.</p>
<p>The <em>who</em> and <em>how</em> are obvious, of course. But the <em>why</em> he’s still working on, and this, apparently, isn’t the way to get Benrey to talk about it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>***</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The delivery lady gives Gordon a weird look, no doubt because he now has a second black eye and pays her with a bloodstained hundred-dollar bill.</p>
<p>Gordon lets her keep the change, adds another bill for the tip, and closes the door on her without waiting for a response. If she didn’t call the cops on him last week when the first set of his bruises were still fresh, she probably won’t do it now, but he’d rather make sure and stay on her good side anyway.</p>
<p>He brings the pad thai into the living room and hands over a box and a pair of disposable chopsticks to Benrey.</p>
<p>And then clarifies, “Don’t eat those.”</p>
<p>Benrey stops right before biting into the chopsticks. “Oh. Not food?”</p>
<p>Oh, right. It makes sense that if using a <em>spoon</em> is a complex task for him, he probably wouldn’t be too familiar with this, either. Somehow, Gordon keeps forgetting Benrey’s only <em>shaped</em> like a human being. One of these days, he’s gonna fuck himself over by doing it at the wrong place, at the wrong time.</p>
<p>At least Benrey seems to recall the conversation they had after the Shower Drain Incident about things that are, and aren’t, appropriate to eat.</p>
<p>“Yeah, not food,” Gordon confirms, plying his own box open. “I’m guessing you’ve never used chopsticks before?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>Around a mouthful of food, he says, “Well, you don’t <em>have</em> to use ‘em. But bare hands is kitchen only.”</p>
<p>The couch has enough stains as it is, with how often they’ve been eating on it lately. Not that Gordon hasn’t contributed his own fair share of them, but at least he’s only messy because his dominant hand is still a little janky. Benrey’s just an unrepentant slob.</p>
<p>Benrey glances in the general direction of the kitchen reluctantly and pouts. “But I wanna learn how to eat with the things. Gordon teach, please? Gordon teacher moments?”</p>
<p>Admittedly, the kitchen has lately been looking less like a room in someone’s home, and more like a mortuary for cardboard boxes and soda cans, so it’s not exactly an appetizing place to get one’s grub on.</p>
<p>The silver lining in all this bullshit, Gordon thinks, is that Benrey can sometimes be <em>very</em> good practice for dealing with a cranky toddler. “I’m not exactly a master at it either. Just get a fork or something. Or a spoon if you want, just—”</p>
<p>Benrey looks him in the eye and starts slowly craning his open box of food towards the couch in what is very obviously a threat he’s willing to follow through on.</p>
<p>
  <em>Good practice for dealing with cats, too, if I ever wanted to get one.</em>
</p>
<p>Gordon groans. “You’re such a fucking baby, man! Fine, I’ll teach you, just— <em>please</em> don’t make a mess, I’ve got enough cleaning up to do already.”</p>
<p>Benrey un-cranes his box and puts it down on the coffee table, fixing Gordon with an attentive stare.</p>
<p>“Basically,” Gordon says, “you’ll want to hold one stick like you’re holding a pen, and the other one in the crook of your thumb and against your ring finger.” He presents his chopsticks and clicks them together a few times to demonstrate.</p>
<p>Benrey leans in and inclines his head this way and that way, taking in Gordon’s hand from different sides and angles.</p>
<p>He squints and says, “I don’t think my hands <em>do</em> that.”</p>
<p>“You won’t know unless you try. I’ll walk you through it, okay? Just… Pick one up and hold it like a pen.”</p>
<p>Benrey grabs one of his sticks around the middle with his entire fist wrapped around it, like he’s going to stab someone with it.</p>
<p>“Come the fuck on! You <em>know</em> how to write,” Gordon accuses. “I’ve seen the shit you send to people on Xbox Live.”</p>
<p>“I know how to <em>type</em>. Pen’s different. Check your fuckin’ privilege, Gordon I-Went-To-MIT-man.”</p>
<p>Despite himself, he laughs. “That’s <em>Doctor</em> Gordon I-Went-To-MIT-man to you, thank you very much. How does a grown-ass man not know how to even <em>hold</em> a pen, though? How old are you, twenty-something?”</p>
<p>Looking thoroughly wounded, Benrey mumbles, “Just show me how to do the thing, man, you don’t gotta be so mean about it…”</p>
<p>Gordon runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “Okay, gimme your hand. I’ll teach you the other part first, it’s probably easier for you to start off with.”</p>
<p>When Benrey does as asked (and Christ, isn’t <em>that</em> a novel experience), Gordon steadies his hand by holding it by the wrist, and places a chopstick against the soft space between Benrey’s thumb and index finger. He nudges Benrey’s ring finger until it’s bent in the correct position, and adjusts the alignment for him until the thinner end of the stick rests against the cuticle.</p>
<p>When Gordon lets go, Benrey’s hand is shaking a little, but at least he manages to not drop the chopstick entirely.</p>
<p>He nods to himself. “Not bad for a first try. You think you got the hang of this one? Do you wanna practice first, or should we move on to the second part?”</p>
<p>“Please…”</p>
<p>“Right. So, you’ll wanna hold it with these three fingers.” He takes Benrey’s hand in his again, guiding the index and middle fingers to one side of the chopstick and the thumb to the other. “You don’t have to squeeze too hard. It’s actually easier if you have a relatively light grasp.”</p>
<p>Again, the chopstick stays in Benrey’s hand, though not necessarily at the desired angle.</p>
<p>“Okay, so that’s step two covered. Step three, you just combine the first two—” Gordon slips in the second chopstick between Benrey’s fingers. “—catch this with your ring finger... You’ll wanna use the upper half of your thumb for the stick that moves, and the lower half for the one that doesn’t, so it’s kind of like a joint or a hinge. Dude, are your hands always this clammy?”</p>
<p>“I <em>hate</em> you,” Benrey blurts out, like he’s helpless to stop himself from saying it. “<em>So</em> much.”</p>
<p>Gordon rolls his eyes and rubs his palms on his pants to wipe off the second hand sweat. “I’m asking because it’s hard to get a good grip if your hands are moist. Try bringing them together?”</p>
<p>It’s very clumsy, a brute force method that suggests Benrey hasn’t fully grasped the underlying technique yet. But he does manage to do a pinching motion with them.</p>
<p>“And now you just gotta practice.” Gordon picks up his own chopsticks. “You’re <em>welcome</em>, by the way.”</p>
<p>Benrey stares at his hand and clicks the wooden tips together, again and again and again.</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Week 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gordon stands in his bedroom with his hands on his waist and despairs.</p><p>Somehow, it is now day number <em>three</em> of this hopeless fucking endeavor.</p><p>He pinches the bridge of his nose and says, “You think it could work like markers?”</p><p>Without a care in the world, Benrey is lying on Gordon’s bed, swinging his legs in the air while fiddling with his new phone. “Whuh?”</p><p>“Markers. You can get permanent marker stains to come off of most surfaces if you draw over them with non-permanent marker. You think it could work like that? Like, if you painted these over with the kind of SweetVoice that you know for sure is gonna fade faster, do you think it’d help with the ones that are already there?”</p><p>He lowers his phone hesitantly and eyeballs the post-heist SweetVoice mess on the bedroom walls. “I could try..? For good friend name of Gordon.”</p><p>Ever since Benrey got the phone— which, <em>by the way</em>, just so everyone’s clear, was <em>not</em> a gift, regardless of what Benrey thinks. Not only did Gordon pay for it with Benrey’s own share of the heist money, making it technically an act of <em>theft</em>, but he also did it for the sole purpose of getting Benrey to leave his laptop the fuck alone, so. <em>Not</em> a gift.</p><p>Anyway. Ever since the gift, Benrey’s been almost obnoxiously cooperative.</p><p>For whatever <em>that’s</em> worth.</p><p>So far, they’ve tried water, soap, and vegetable oil; nail polish remover, turpentine, and a couple of other solvents, including one that was specifically advertised as a paint stripper; some kind of nondescript, volatile potion that Doctor Darnold had been kind enough to bring over on the condition that they wouldn’t under any circumstance attempt to bring it back to him; a safety razor, a plastic scraper, and a couple different sandpapers; a sander that Benrey ‘borrowed’ from one of their neighbors without <em>any</em> fucking regard to how embarrassing it would be, and was, for Gordon to return it; and two regular paints that just wouldn’t take.</p><p>It’s been over a week since the heist, and despite Benrey’s initial insistence that it would all fade away in <em>‘like a few hours tops, get off my back, bro</em>’, his bedroom is <em>still</em> covered in SweetVoice graffiti.</p><p>And Joshua’s first weekend stay is in two days, so this better fucking work.</p><p>Gordon sits on the edge of his bed just to stop himself from pacing. “Well, go ahead, man, the floor’s all yours.”</p><p>Benrey takes his sweet time getting up – probably wanted to get out of combat and save before getting up – but he does eventually go stand by the wall with the south facing windows. He takes a deep and steady breath, and begins to sing.</p><p>Gordon’s said it before and he’ll say it again, though preferably not to Benrey: he’s not a big fan of the SweetVoice balls, at least not in his mouth, but the sound itself is genuinely beautiful, and kind of a treat to get to listen to. Besides, it’s still fucking <em>wild</em> to him that he gets to watch someone so effortlessly break the laws of physics in his own house. All that time and money he spent on getting a world-class doctorate, and he might as well use it to wipe his ass.</p><p>With meticulous attention, Benrey uses blue orbs – the kind Gordon’s started to think of as ‘default’, though he couldn’t say if that’s actually the case – to draw a surprisingly symmetrical square on the wall, strategically positioned over an area with a variety of different SweetVoice stains. He then paints it in, sustaining the same high note for several minutes with what seems like no effort at all.</p><p>After that, there’s nothing else to do than wait for the blue to start fading, so they sit on the bed, Gordon jiggling his leg, Benrey tapping away at his phone.</p><p>Gradually, the outer edges of the blue square begin to disappear, bit by bit. And sure enough, wherever the blue had covered any of the smaller and paler stains now remains a perfectly clean patch of white. But the stains that are a little bigger and brighter have only partially faded, faint like old coffee rings — and the largest, most vivid ones don’t seem affected at all.</p><p>“Oh, nice, it worked,” Benrey remarks, barely bothering to look. “Kinda. Wrong headspace, I guess.”</p><p>Gordon squeezes his eyes shut. “Not that I don’t appreciate that you tried, but I kinda needed more than ‘kinda’.”</p><p>The mattress shifts and dips as Benrey leans back on the bed. “You think the kid won’t like it?”</p><p>“What? No. Joshie’s way too young to make that kind of value judgment.”</p><p>“Then why you freakin’ out?”</p><p>Realistically, Gordon knows he’s a little prone to catastrophizing. But there’s no denying that if anyone <em>normal</em> were to see the supernaturally altered state of his bedroom, it’d be guaranteed to immediately turn into a Steamed Hams type of situation with way more at stake than Gordon can handle thinking about right now.</p><p>Before the Resonance Cascade, back when <em>he</em>’d been normal too with no skeletons in the closet to speak of, it had never even occurred to him to be worried about the kind of close outside scrutiny that’s par for the course with adopting.</p><p>“I just don’t want Joshua’s foster parents to, uh...” <em>To realize that I’ve completely lost control of my life.</em> Gordon clears his throat. “To think I’m a bitch who lives like this, I guess.”</p><p>“You are, though. Aren’t you? You’re a— a bit of a lazy boy, huh? A lil’ dirty boy.”</p><p>Gordon’s eyes roll to the back of his head from irritation and the sheer effort of not falling the obvious bait.</p><p>Ever since the heist, Gordon’s internal mantra has gone from a desperate <em>do it for Tommy</em> to a more tentative <em>Benrey did save our lives</em>. After all, getting occasionally shit-talked in his home is a pretty small price to pay for not dying or, even worse, getting captured again by the US military; knowing from personal experience how they sadistic they could be for absolutely no reason at all, the things they might’ve done to him after he’d given them a <em>very</em> good reason to be vindictive by launching a full-on attack on the White House—</p><p>
  <em>Not gonna think about that. See enough nightmares about it as it is. One freak-out at a time, Gordon.</em>
</p><p>He flops back on his bed next to Benrey, thinking about sticks and stones, and puts an arm over his face to shield his tired eyes from the lamp above. “You know what, Benrey? You’re right. I <em>am</em> lazy, and kind of a shitty homeowner, and… <em>Barely</em> even a functional adult these days. And in a couple of weeks to a few months, unless I fuck up the adoption process first, I’m gonna be a full-time dad, and I’m <em>definitely</em> gonna fuck <em>that</em> up real quick, too. Probably gonna <em>ruin</em> that poor kid’s life. You happy now?”</p><p>“Wh—” Benrey chokes on his own objection, audibly disturbed. “No, man! Whadda hell. You’re supposed to be like—” He adopts a very playground-esque mocking voice. “‘<em>Bleuughh, screw you, Benrey! I’m not lazy! I’ll, fuckin’</em>… Uhhhh… <em>Make you eat your words, bro! Mnuuughh! Waaaahh!!</em>’</p><p>“Credit where credit is due: that’s a pretty great impression of me at age seven.”</p><p>“Thank you. Anyway, after that you always, like, get so into bitching at me that you forget to be a scared lil’ crybaby all the time, and somewhere along the way you figure something out with that big fuckin’ galaxy brain of yours and saaave the daaay!”</p><p>Gordon snorts. “<em>That’s</em> who you think I am? How you view me? Really?”</p><p>“Yeah, man.”</p><p>It’s so unexpectedly and impossibly sincere that he has to lower his arm and look.</p><p>Benrey’s studying the ceiling, eyes minutely darting back and forth like he can read something in the chaos of colors up there.</p><p>There’s no sneer or smug grin. No insult. No punchline.</p><p>Gordon looks up as well, and tries to imagine what Benrey might be seeing in there. Gordon’s eyes are drawn to colors that stand out, patterns that are more tightly grouped together than others in formations that bring to mind constellations. “These colors all mean something, huh?”</p><p>Benrey hums a sound equivalent of a shrug.</p><p>“And I’m guessing the blue square you made just now didn’t mean anything?”</p><p>“That was, um… Keysmashing. Or Zalgo.”</p><p>“Right, right.” Gordon picks something at random and points up at one of the biggest patterns, one with warm pastel colors. “What’s this dusty yellow and grayish pink one above the door? Does that one mean something?”</p><p>Benrey glances at it and smirks. “Tuscany to arylide. ‘<em>Told</em> you you should stay inside’...”</p><p>It’s hard to justify getting too mad about a told-you-so like that, or feel like it wasn’t deserved, when being right about it would’ve ended in all of them dying. If anything, Benrey’s objectively <em>right</em> to call him out on having been a bitch about it.</p><p>Gordon shakes his head in faux disapproval. “Damn. Kicking a man while he’s down, huh? You couldn’t do a color combination for <em>‘I was right and you were wrong, you totally needed my help and I saved your ass, so suck it, Freeman</em>’?”</p><p>Benrey cracks up a little, in that softer, sleepier way he sometimes does. “I coulda, but. ‘Roni Rules. You said ‘no spoopy’ includes SweetVoice.” He frowns in thought. “Also, that’s very long and specific?”</p><p>If it weren’t for how anxious he is about the current situation, Gordon would pump his fist in the air. As far as he’s concerned, if it’s out of Benrey’s mouth, any variation on the words ‘<em>you said no, so I didn’t’</em> might as well be the single most beautiful string of words in the entire English language. God, maybe they could actually survive this arrangement in the long term without murdering each other. “You remembered that, huh?”</p><p>“Yup. I, uh...” Benrey actually has the decency to look a little sheepish. “I didn’t mean to fuck up your room like this. It just kinda came out, you know?”</p><p>“That can happen?”</p><p>He tsks. “Like <em>you’ve</em> never blurted out sum’n before thinkin’ about it.”</p><p><em>All day, every day, all the fucking time.</em> Gordon’s perfectly, painfully aware he has no filter, and tries to be mindful of that fact, but it’s not the same as having one. There are situations where wearing his heart on his sleeve can be — and has been, actually – a boon for him, but admittedly it’s also been a pretty consistent source of conflict in his life.</p><p>“You got me there,” he allows. “Okay, what about that one? The one over there that’s like a, uh… A dark purple, like, uh… Burgundy? Or plum, maybe? And then a bl—”</p><p>Benrey sits up to stare at him with the most openly offended look Gordon’s ever seen on him. “Wh— bro, that’s <em>wine</em>. Maybe get your fuckin’ eyes checked? Thottie Feetman over here tryina act all smart about things he don’t know shit about.”</p><p>
  <em>Interesting reaction…</em>
</p><p>“What? What’d I say? Was it something offensive?” Gordon blinks. “Did you just call me— you said ‘doctor’, right?”</p><p>“<em>Don’t</em> try to guess the colors, man, that’s some yikes— some real clown type shit. Don’t be sayin’ shit like that. I’m so fuckin’ embarrassed for you, man.”</p><p>Gordon has another internal <em>he did save our lives</em> moment. “Okay, fine, whatever. But what’s it mean? The, uh, wine, with that shade of blue.”</p><p>“Point it out for me again?”</p><p>Gordon does.</p><p>Benrey’s expression immediately closes off.</p><p>In his security guard equivalent of a retail voice, he says, like it’s completely unnegotiable: “That’s private information, you shouldn’t be asking about that.”</p><p>Oh, what’s this? A rare chance to be the pest for once, let Benrey have a taste of his own medicine? Yes, please, Gordon will have that to <em>go</em>.</p><p>Gordon rolls onto his side and props his head up on his arm. “Fine. If you’re gonna be a lil’ bitch about this, I can always just…” He digs into his pocket and brings out his own phone. “Ask Tommy. Right?”</p><p>Oh, it’s good. It’s <em>so</em> good. Benrey looks like he’s about to fucking <em>bolt</em>. “That’s— don’t. You can’t.”</p><p>Gordon aims his phone at the ceiling, hovering his thumb over the shutter button. “Yeah? Why not?”</p><p>“It’s— you—” Benrey swipes at him in an attempt to grab the phone out of his hand, but Gordon’s arms are longer and can put it out of reach with relative ease. “You’re not allowed. It’s against the law. I’m gonna have to arrest you, siiir...”</p><p>Gordon laughs. “What are you talking about? You’re not a cop, man!”</p><p>Benrey seems to do a quick inventory of the possible exits and some kind of mental calculus before he grabs Gordon’s right forearm for balance and leans over him, reaching for the phone. “Citizen’s arrest. You’re doing an illegal— uh, crime—”</p><p>Gordon shoves Benrey off of him and onto his back, holding the phone as high as he can. “As opposed to a legal crime?”</p><p>“Cease and fuckin’ desist, Feetman, this isn’t funny. You—” Benrey tries to get up, but he’s still holding onto Gordon’s arm, which makes it easy for Gordon to topple him over simply by leaning in. “Yo, you gotta— please stop. You said you wouldn’t touch my stuff! You promised!”</p><p>Gordon’s pretty used to doing things one-handed by now, but since it’s his right one, it still takes him significant effort to wrest his arm free and pin one of Benrey’s against the mattress in return. “Yeah, but this isn’t ‘stuff’, it’s not ‘yours’ if it’s on <em>my</em> walls, and taking a picture isn’t ‘touching’ it! Tommy’s gonna see it eventually one way or another, so why—”</p><p>Benrey blinds him with a sudden blast of SweetVoice directly into his eyes, and next thing Gordon knows, Benrey’s hooked his legs around Gordon’s raised arm in an attempt to use his weight to drag down the phone, the arm, and Gordon himself. It’s only out of some kind of misplaced prey instinct that Gordon blindly tosses his phone away before Benrey can reach it, and the phone bounces off of the bed and onto the floor with a clatter.</p><p>Gordon’s barely had time to do a quick wipe of his gooped-up eyes before the jostling of the mattress alerts him to Benrey trying crawling away from him, looking to dive off of the bed after the phone, so Gordon yanks him back and pins his other wrist down, too. Just to be extra safe, he straddles Benrey by his waist, in case he gets any ideas about trying to using his legs again or, god forbid, kicking him.</p><p>A little out of breath and feeling sweaty, he looks down at Benrey, who seems even more strained than him – but only in the psychological sense of the word.</p><p><em>This motherfucker</em>, Gordon realizes, <em>is sandbagging.</em></p><p>Benrey tries the same SweetVoice bullshit on him again, but this time Gordon can feel Benrey’s chest rise with the initial inhale and leans away from it in time.</p><p>“Come on, man, you’re gonna make the stains worse.”</p><p>“Don’t ask Tommy,” Benrey whines. “It’s not fair. I’ve been such a nice, a— a good boy, why are you being so fuckin’ mean to me, man? You can’t ask him.”</p><p>“Yeah? How exactly were you gonna stop me?”</p><p>Benrey just <em>looks</em> at him with those big, dark eyes of his, clearly begging for the kind of unconditional mercy Gordon doesn’t really feel like he’s been sufficiently incentivized to show.</p><p>Gordon stares right back, mostly unmoved and completely unimpressed.</p><p>It takes a surprisingly long time for Benrey to catch on, but once he does, his doe-eyed look is suddenly replaced by a cold one, and he settles on trying to blast Gordon’s face once more. It seems like a half-hearted effort at best, missing by almost a foot and landing somewhere past Gordon’s shoulder in a sustained stream instead. “Uh, what the fuck are you d—”</p><p>And then it clicks.</p><p>The walls. Oh, <em>shit</em>.</p><p>“<em>No</em>. Stop! Stop, you fucking asshole! Benrey, I swear to God—”</p><p>Benrey doesn’t stop, merely raising his eyebrows instead, clearly daring Gordon to have anything to say about it. Gordon desperately tries to plug Benrey’s mouth with his hands, but he might as well be trying to do it to a pressure washer; the harder he tries, the worse it gets, an already messy stream of rapidly changing colors turning into a crude and unstable sprinkler under his fingers until the moment he has the good sense to let go.</p><p>He grabs a pillow instead, shoving it against Benrey’s face and leaning onto it with his forearms, and for a glorious split second he thinks he has his victory until he realizes the SweetVoice is starting to seep out from under the pillow and rapidly form a little pool on the bed around them.</p><p>Gordon gives up on the pillow.</p><p>Very briefly, in a fit of desperation, Gordon wonders if taking a swing at Benrey would make him stop, and is surprised to realize just how repulsive the idea is to him. He takes pride in being someone who has always categorically refused to attempt solving his problems with his fists unless his life depended on it, yeah, and he’s had enough time now to start dwelling on some of the choices he made during the Resonance Cascade that he’s definitely not proud of in the cold light of day. But there’s also another level to it where the thought of doing that <em>specifically</em> to Benrey — a guy who Gordon used to empty entire clips into on a whim with less than zero qualms about it — makes him feel like absolute dogshit.</p><p>He does <em>not</em> have time to pursue that line of thought. All of his other options exhausted, he’ll just have to try to reason with Benrey.</p><p>It comes out somewhere between begging and insulting.</p><p>“Stop, you piece of shit, stop, you’re making it <em>so</em> much worse, I can’t fucking— please, for the love of Christ, Benrey, why, <em>why</em> would you do this to me— <em>god</em>, I fucking hate you—” He throws his hands in the air in surrender. “Look, I won’t ask Tommy, okay! I swear! I swear on my miserable fuckin’ life, so please just <em>stop</em>!”</p><p>Finally, mercifully, Benrey stops.</p><p>Honestly, Gordon doesn’t even have to look to have a good idea of just how more fucked he is now. It’s that voice in the back of his head, the one that immediately points out how completely fucking stupid and avoidable all of this was, that makes him look anyway. He slowly turns around to survey all the new damage around them and feels his heart drop all the way down to Earth’s inner core.</p><p>“Huh,” Benrey mutters, craning his head to see past Gordon. “Bus seats.”</p><p>“I’m never gonna get rid of all this,” Gordon whispers in abject horror. “I’m gonna need a new <em>house</em>.”</p><p>“What if I, uh… What if I put in a lil’ more?”</p><p>He has to actively restrain himself from grabbing Benrey by his shirt. “Christ alive, <em>why?</em> You’ve <em>won</em>, Benrey. I am <em>defeated</em>. You got what you wanted! This is overkill, they’re gonna try you at the fucking Hague—”</p><p>Halfway through, Benrey starts singing blue at him and keeps going until Gordon gets the hint and shuts up. Not that the small orbs are actually having their usual calming effect on him; Gordon’s <em>so</em> beyond the ability to calm down right now, he’s come out the other end of the spectrum and achieved Anxiety Zen. More than anything else, it’s the dawning resignation to the fact that yelling at Benrey is about as useful as trying to cure a hangover with vodka shots that makes him comply.</p><p>“Just look at it,” Benrey insists. “Doesn’t that look a lot like the kinda wack, pretentious bullshit you’d see at a fancy art gallery or some shit?"</p><p>Confused, Gordon follows Benrey’s gaze to the wall behind him again, the one that got the worst of the SweetVoice abuse. You could hardly tell that it used to be white; there’s so much shit going on with all the colors and random splatter patterns that it…</p><p><em>Does</em>…</p><p><em>Almost</em> look…</p><p><em>Kind of</em> intentional? Like an amateur artist’s first attempt at contemporary art in wall mural form. Or those tacky seat covers they use on public transit to hide all the accumulated grime.</p><p>Gordon squints at Benrey, rapidly running out of patience. “Are you just popping off about the swag art you made while ruining my life again, or is this actually going somewhere?”</p><p>“If I do that to the entire room, it won’t look like a mess. It’ll just look like someone’s real sucks at painting.”</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Huh.</p><p>Benrey watches him with bated breath while Gordon plays the whole thing out inside his head.</p><p>“I do suck at painting,” Gordon slowly says. “And it’s probably not much of a reach to assume that someone like me would have zero good taste in interior design. So that… <em>Could</em> actually work.”</p><p>“So it’s fixed. Yeah? It’s fixed. I’ve fixed it? The, uh, problem? No ruined life? No yelly?”</p><p>He really wishes Benrey would stop doing that thing where he pretends to give a shit one way or another. He groans. “I mean, you’re literally the reason I had the problem in the first place. But yeah, I think I can work with this for now.”</p><p>“And you won’t ask Tommy? Please and thank you?”</p><p>Oh, right. <em>There’s</em> his fucking dog treat.</p><p>Well, whatever. It’s been made exceedingly clear to Gordon that asking Tommy isn’t worth the fucking hassle, and this whole thing stopped being funny a long while back, anyway, so it’s a no-brainer.</p><p>Gordon nods.</p><p>Benrey breaks into a smile so relieved, it’s somehow uncomfortable to look at. Like Gordon’s not supposed to be seeing it.</p><p>He says, “So you gonna get off me now, or did you wanna get me off first? Winking smiley face.”</p><p> </p><p>The end result isn’t actually that awful to look at. Benrey doesn’t seem to think so, going through several iterations that look virtually the same to Gordon’s untrained eye until insisting that he’ll redo the walls properly when they have more time, turn it into ‘<em>something less Windows 95</em>’, as he’d put it. And if the walls now faintly glow in the dark, just enough that Gordon can see the outline of his room without having to keep the lights on all night? That’s a plus, in his book.</p><p>Doesn’t explain why he feels bad for making Benrey fuck off for the weekend while Joshua’s over, though.</p><p>On Thursday night, Benrey’s packing away what he’d generously called his ‘sleepover essentials’ – which so far consists of a toothbrush, some spare controllers, the snot-crusted MIT t-shirt Gordon sure as hell hadn’t meant Benrey could keep <em>indefinitely</em>, and probably around fifty K in cash stuffed inside a pillowcase – when Gordon asks him where he’s gonna be staying.</p><p>Benrey’s cursory glance is so gloomy, Gordon’s surprised that he even bothers answering. “Tommy’s. Or I guess his pop’s, technically.”</p><p>“Yeah? You got any plans?”</p><p>“Hell yeah. We’re gonna stay up late painting our nails and talking about boys. Gonna have a pillow fight and watch You’ve Got Mail – <em>the</em> greatest romance movie of all time—” He waits, bemused, for Gordon to stop laughing. “It’s gonna be dope. <em>You’re</em> not invited, though. Sucks for you, huh, idiot? To get left out? Friend.”</p><p>It’s a little alarming to realize that it does, just a little bit. It’s been a long damn time since Gordon’s had the opportunity to spend some quality time friends. (Been a long damn time since he’s had time <em>or</em> friends, actually.) But if it’s a choice between that and getting to spend quality time with Joshie, he’ll gladly take that L for now.</p><p>He folds his arms and smiles. “Honestly? That does sound like fun. I wouldn’t say no to an invite, if the timing was better.”</p><p>Benrey’s eyes light up. “Yeah? You want in on movie night?”</p><p>Another thing to add onto Gordon’s growing list of things he probably shouldn’t think too hard about: the way his stomach flips at the hope in Benrey’s voice. “I mean, it’s not like I have anything better to do these days. Yeah, we could do that next week after you get back, sure. Why not?”</p><p>“We don’t gotta wait till next week, bro. I could tell Tommy something came up. Paint <em>your</em> nails, if you want. Give a, uhh…” Benrey’s gaze pointedly flicks downwards and lingers. “Give you a lil’ pedicure, exclusive. Premium shit, subscription only—”</p><p>Gordon snorts. “I’ll see you on Monday, Benrey.”</p><p>Benrey merely gives an exaggerated sigh in response, but there’s also a cheerful glint to his eyes now that Gordon wouldn’t mind seeing more often.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>aghhh sorry this one's so late and janky, i've been v ill and idk how to write action in this language so the pacing is positively ass</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Week 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>On the night of the third day of the heatwave, there’s a deafening burst of sound and a glorious split-second display of light.</p>
<p>The circuit breaker trips, the house goes dark, and Gordon’s mind goes blank mid-sentence.</p>
<p>His heart is pounding in his ears so loud he can barely hear the creaking of one of the kitchen chairs and the quietly muttered, “The hell..?”</p>
<p>Gordon does the only thing he can do: stands very still, very quietly. Vaguely aware that he’s still holding a large bowl of whipped cream, he hugs it to his chest.</p>
<p>There’s an audible sniff. “You smell smoke in here?”</p>
<p>“Yep,” he chokes out. “Yeah.”</p>
<p>A pause. “Were you gonna check it out? Or what.”</p>
<p>“I.” Gordon swallows. “I can’t… Move.”</p>
<p>“Oh. The fuck’s wrong with you?”</p>
<p><em>I’m gonna fall. They’re gonna find me. I can’t </em>do<em> anything—</em></p>
<p>No, that’s not why. “My feet are stuck. I think I might… Need to relog, actually.”</p>
<p>The bowl is taken away from Gordon and set aside, which shouldn’t make him flinch. It shouldn’t. He’s an adult, a grown-ass man. He doesn’t need the lights on to know where he is, and when. He’s home. He’s safe now. He made it. He’s home.</p>
<p>But also, at the same time, somewhere else.</p>
<p>Something very bright is pointed directly at his eyes, then handed to him. It’s too thin and rectangular to be a gun, but he latches onto it anyway. A phone that isn’t his, with flashlight mode on.</p>
<p>A light touch on his waist directs him to turn around and take a seat. “Yo, you gotta… Calm the fuck down. Okay? You calm down and put that brain of yours back together while I go check it out. BRB.”</p>
<p>Gordon can hear maybe five more steps before they stop again, and a cough-like sound of surprise almost immediately afterwards.</p>
<p>“W— oh, <em>shit</em>. Uhhhhh…” Louder, then: “Don’t, uh, don’t look! I gotta do a thing real quick. Okay? Stay inside, Gordon.”</p>
<p>Gordon doesn’t hear the patio door go. He hears sharp crunching sounds instead, like sheets of ice breaking underfoot, and a thud from a heavy landing on the patio outside.</p>
<p>There’s a sudden rush of displaced air strong enough to pull at the kitchen curtains, followed by loud, persistent rustling, like sails surging in the wind.</p>
<p>Something about the idea of waking up one morning and simply <em>finding</em> a sailboat in his backyard in landlocked New Mexico is funny enough to Gordon that it gets him to walk over to the living room to take a look, a calm little peek at the broken windows, the glass and soot and nondescript molten goo all over the floor, the fire that’s rapidly inching across his lawn and along the outer walls, and the giant figure on its giant knees out on his patio, trying to smother the flames with a giant PS2 hoodie.</p>
<p>Gordon walks back into the kitchen and leans over the sink in case he needs to throw up.</p>
<p>“I’m <em>okay</em>,” he insists out loud, just to hear his own voice. “I am <em>safe</em>.”</p>
<p>The ground under him shudders violently in time with the giant moving around outside, and he retches.</p>
<p>It’s hard to say how long he’s been standing there, shaking with the effort of trying to center himself enough keep his dinner down, when those steps from before re-enter the room, this time with what feels like deliberate noisiness.</p>
<p>He feels a light touch on both sides of his face. Loose strands of hair are being carefully bunched together and smoothed along his forehead or swept behind his ear – out of the way, he realizes, in case he does throw up.</p>
<p>
  <em>What a jarringly nice thing for a monster to do.</em>
</p>
<p>He doesn’t throw up. He remembers the phone he’s holding and opens his eyes, using the light to take in the room around him. He doesn’t know what he expected; it’s still his kitchen, in his home. It’s just <em>dark</em>. The only thing that’s different from before is Benrey, who’s come back from his brief excursion covered in soot and smelling like burnt leaves and grass, even from several feet away.</p>
<p>Benrey picks up the whisk he’d been licking clean earlier and says, “AC unit blew up. Power’s out. Told you not to look. NASCAR pony next?”</p>
<p>Gordon looks from Benrey’s face to the whisk, then back. “Sorry, what?”</p>
<p>“We got the, uh.” Benrey waves the whisk at the springform pan on the counter, casting long shadows on the wall behind him. “Crushed cookies ‘n butter at the bottom, check. Whipped cream, check. You were saying somethin’ about an Italian NASCAR pony?”</p>
<p>“<em>Was</em> I? That can’t be right.”</p>
<p>Benrey clicks his tongue. “Cake, bro! For Bubby and Coomer’s homecoming thing?”</p>
<p>Oh, <em>Mascarpone</em>. For the cheesecake they’re making. Gordon knew that, of course. Even when he knows he’s fucking losing it, he doesn’t really forget where he actually is and what he’s actually doing. It’s more like he remembers. The combat knife in a dark breakroom and the blinding fucking pain, yeah, but something else, too, a feeling of disconnect, like none of this is—</p>
<p>Benrey’s snapping his fingers in front of Gordon’s face. “Paging Doctor Feetman! You’re needed in the, fuckin’, uhhh… Kitchen, ‘cause I’m about to go <em>Crazytown</em> on this cream unless you stop me in the next ten seconds.”</p>
<p>Gordon laughs a little, but he also knows better than to not take the threat seriously. “Don’t do that. Sorry, I just got… Disoriented, I guess.” He feels out the pockets under his apron and finds his phone, switching that onto flashlight mode, too. He frowns as he takes stock of the room and where they left off with the ingredients. “You said the AC unit <em>blew up</em>?”</p>
<p>“Hmm? Yeah.”</p>
<p>“And the, uh, the power’s out? Did you try the circuit breaker?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. It didn’t do the thing.”</p>
<p>“Huh. Actually, you know what?” He unties his hair and apron both. “Fuck it. We can’t refrigerate any of this stuff, so Operation Cheesecake is officially cancelled. Go stupid. I’ll just…” Gordon lets himself sink to the floor with his back against the counter, feeling tired in a way he definitely wasn’t less than ten minutes ago. “Worry about the rest in the morning. I can’t do this shit right now.”</p>
<p>“Ha ha, oh shit.” Grinning wildly, Benrey picks up the bowl of cream with both hands, bowed forward and clearly about to dunk his entire head in there so he can wear it like a helmet – but seems to reconsider. Instead, he removes the other whisk attachment from the mixer, dips it in the bowl, and rotates it, gathering cream onto it in an imitation of cotton candy. He extends it to Gordon slowly and warily, like a gunman’s hand going for the pistol in an old western.</p>
<p>Gordon accepts the whisk with equal if not greater suspicion, and Benrey uses the other whisk to make another one, for himself this time. He joins Gordon on the floor, close enough that their shoulders are touching; Gordon can’t tell if that’s more unnerving or disarming.</p>
<p>“Real scared of the dark, huh.”</p>
<p><em>Here we go.</em> The inevitable ridicule. Might as well just accept it, get it over quicker. “Yep. You figured it out. Great job.”</p>
<p>“Why, though?”</p>
<p>Gordon turns his head to look at Benrey’s cream-spotted face. He looks more concerned with trying to get his tongue to reach the cream stuck between the spokes than anything else. It’s, uh.</p>
<p>He averts his eyes and takes a careful lick at his own whisk. “It’s… More about what’s <em>in</em> the dark than the dark itself, I guess.”</p>
<p>“Bro, that’s the same fuckin’ thing. B— uh, but, like... Monsters or sum’n?”</p>
<p><em>Aliens, pitfalls, mines, hazardous substances, the military, and more than anything else</em>—</p>
<p>He doesn’t have the presence of mind to suppress the shiver that runs through him then, and the moment jolts Benrey’s whisk-holding arm just enough to jostle a tiny dollop of cream onto his shirt.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s the casual way Benrey swipes most of it onto his index finger, or the decidedly non-threatening way he sticks his tongue out of his mouth to lick it off, but something uncomfortable swells in Gordon’s chest and has him blurt out, “You, actually.”</p>
<p>Benrey pauses mid-lick, momentarily looking a lot like a kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, then shrugs. “I feel that.”</p>
<p>“You don’t,” Gordon snaps. “You really don’t. God, what are you even <em>talking</em> about? You’re fucking immortal. What could you possibly have to be afraid of? Getting VAC banned?”</p>
<p>“No, I mean— I was <em>trying</em> to freak you out, and it worked, so. I get it. But I’m not a bad anymore. You can stop freaking out now.”</p>
<p>With cream all over Benrey’s nose, around his mouth, and even in his eyelashes, Gordon can almost find it in him to believe it. Makes him feel like he’d like to<em>.</em></p>
<p>“Even if that were true, I can’t exactly just turn it off, Benrey. Trauma’s more like a—” He waggles his whisk in the air in search of words. “A reflex. Doesn’t exactly take a lot of getting betrayed to the military for forcible amputation before you develop a fucked up Pavlovian response to whatever you associate with that.”</p>
<p>It’s a fucking miracle he gets all that out without his voice breaking.</p>
<p>Benrey frowns. “But that’s dumb. That doesn’t happen every time it gets dark. You’d just be a torso by now.” He dips his whisk into the cream once more and nudges Gordon by his elbow. “You gotta find a way to stop doing that, bro. Not a fan.”</p>
<p>Gordon laughs, high-pitched and incredulous. “I’m sorry, is my PTSD <em>inconveniencing</em> you?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, actually,” Benrey mumbles, tossing his spent whisk into the cream bowl and almost toppling the whole thing over. “It’s real sucks for me. But probably you even more, huh? So I’m— I’m trying. To be nice.” He draws his knees up to his chest. “There’s gotta be something I can do, right? To help?”</p>
<p>For a few irrational seconds, Gordon actually considers it, trying to picture what it would take for him to relax around Benrey, and feels his blood run cold as he realizes, for what must be hundredth fucking time in the past month or so, that for all intents and purposes he’s <em>already there</em>. It’s one thing for Benrey to be living in his house as a favor to a friend, but most victims of attempted murder don’t just voluntarily hang out with heir attempted murderers, do they? Or teach them about baking? Or let them, you know, talk you down from a panic attack?</p>
<p>Everything else he could write off as survival tactics, keeping his head low, trying not to rock the boat. But not the part where he falls asleep on the couch roughly every other night, not despite but specifically <em>because of</em> Benrey’s inane commentary over whatever atrocious retro game he’s trying out on a given day. Either that’s trust, or Stockholm Syndrome, and Gordon’s not too keen on either.</p>
<p>Benrey waits very politely while Gordon mentally walks himself back from that ledge. Just to firmly establish it to himself, he says: “No, I really don’t think there is.”</p>
<p>“Why not?”</p>
<p>“<em>How</em> do you not know—” <em>Deep breaths, Gordon</em>. “Jesus. Benrey, you can’t just turn into a huge fucking monster and try to kill me and my friends and then pretend like that didn’t happen with <em>no</em> apology whatsoever, no explanation that I can make <em>any</em> kind of sense of, not even a <em>hint</em> of remorse—”</p>
<p>Benrey snaps his fingers and points at him, smiling widely. “Huge monster, got it. Hold on, lemme try something.”</p>
<p>“Try <em>what</em>?”</p>
<p>One moment, Benrey’s there, and the next, without fanfare or anything more than a muffled <em>splat</em>, he’s gone.</p>
<p>Gordon carefully raises Benrey’s phone and aims the light at every corner of the kitchen, not sure what he’s expecting to find. “The fuck..?”</p>
<p>“Down here.”</p>
<p>He follows Benrey’s voice and the <em>very</em> quiet sound of splashing to the bowl of cream and peers in. Benrey’s in there, shrunken down to about the size of Gordon’s palm and rapidly sinking into the partially deflated cream.</p>
<p>“I dunno how to undo all that other stuff,” he calls out. “But the opposite of a huge is a small, right?”</p>
<p>Gordon stares at him in fascination bordering on enchantment. “It doesn’t really, uh. Work. Like that…” Gordon’s voice trails off as he watches Benrey shrink a little more. He reaches out on a whim and plucks Benrey out of the cream by the back of his shirt, lifting him to his own eye level. He pinches Benrey by the midriff and squeezes him lightly out of curiosity, feeling muscles and ribs and the line of Benrey’s spine underneath. “Actually, this kind of <em>is</em> working for me.”</p>
<p>Benrey pretends to struggle around, hitting Gordon’s fingers with his lil’ fists with all the force of an ant and swinging his legs in the air. “Oh nooo, I’m sooo small and helpless, you could do anything to meee…”</p>
<p>Gordon laughs. “I could, huh?” He grins maliciously, freely letting Benrey’s overacting fuel his mind with all manner of cruel and unusual punishment. “What if I flushed you down the toilet right now? You’d just let me do that?”</p>
<p>Benrey shrugs. “I’d stink pretty bad when I got back.”</p>
<p>Gordon reaches for the kitchen towel and starts wiping cream off of Benrey’s small form. “I <em>could</em> just toss you in the washer afterwards.”</p>
<p>Benrey gasps with excitement. “Yooo, I wanna try out the tumble dry! Bet it’s gonna feel like going to space, except… Wet.”</p>
<p>
  <em>I guess you can’t really intimidate an immortal being even when they’re half the size of a Funko Pop.</em>
</p>
<p>Gordon sits Benrey down on the floor and squints. “So you can just pick any size you want?”</p>
<p>“Any size, any time,” Benrey proudly confirms, wrapping the kitchen towel around himself like a blanket. “Too small and I fall through the ground, though. Too big, and…” He peers over Gordon’s palm, all the way down to the floor. “People get weird about it. S’dumb.”</p>
<p>“What about shapes?”</p>
<p>“Wha?” Gordon waits for him to catch on. “Yeah, I can do shapes. Lot harder to figure out if they’re not people shapes, though. Takes me a while to perfect one.”</p>
<p>“’People shapes’, huh? So, theoretically, you could change your appearance into anyone you want?” He licks his lips. “Like, could you do me, for instance?</p>
<p>“Wh— uh. Ch’yeah. If you want—”</p>
<p>Gordon closes his fist around Benrey and the kitchen towel, trapping him inside the miniature blanket burrito as he brings him way up close to his face. “Or John Wick?”</p>
<p>As they stare one another down, Benrey keeps smiling, but something akin to terror creeps into his widened eyes.</p>
<p>Just as Benrey opens his mouth, the phone in Gordon’s other hand vibrates once. Then again. And then more or less continuously.</p>
<p>He glances at the notification and raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Why is Bubby texting me links to— wait, this is <em>your</em> phone.” He puts Benrey down on the kitchen counter again, and his phone down next to him. “Why is Bubby texting <em>you</em> links to online jewelry stores?”</p>
<p>“Oh, their flight back musta been delayed again.” Benrey wastes no time unwrapping himself and leaps on over to his phone, unlocking it with his feet like he’s doing moves on a DDR pad. Small as he is, it takes large swooping motions with his whole arm to scroll up as he showcases an outrageously long list of links, each accompanied with bits of text that Gordon can only read in glimpses — pros and cons lists, from what he can tell. “Some people chew their nails when nervous. Bubby starts doin’ research.”</p>
<p>“Research for what?”</p>
<p>Benrey sits down on the edge of his phone and looks up at Gordon with a secretive smirk. “Engagement rings. Dude’s gettin’ wayyy ahead of himself, but I respect the ambition, y’know? Go hard or go home.”</p>
<p>“But that’s— he doesn’t have a— does he?” Bubby’s mentioned an ex-wife, Gordon remembers that much, but there was never any mention of a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, at that. “Unless— wait.”</p>
<p>Benrey’s finally done scrolling past Bubby’s deluge of links in his message history and zooms in on one of the most recent pictures he’s received. It’s a photo of Doctor Coomer and Bubby; Doctor Coomer is holding the camera (or phone, more likely) with one mechanically extended arm, and has the other wrapped around Bubby’s shoulders, caught mid-laugh. For his part, Bubby looks uncomfortable and extremely out of his element, the forced expression of polite neutrality on his face more reminiscent of a driver’s license or an ID card than anyone’s holiday photo. They’re leaning on a balcony railing, against a lush mountainous backdrop of the type of idyllic Mediterranean countryside Gordon had always just assumed didn’t actually exist outside the carefully staged and heavily edited perfection of travel agency brochures.</p>
<p>Gordon’s seen this picture before, actually. Doctor Coomer has been sending them all copious amounts of photos from their travels across Europe, very keen on documenting what he’d called Bubby’s first real moments of freedom.</p>
<p>
  <em>Wait.</em>
</p>
<p>He points at Benrey’s phone and exclaims, “<em>That’s</em> the dirt you have on Bubby?! That he’s gonna propose to Doctor Coomer?”</p>
<p>“Nah. I mean, not yet. Should probably go out on like a date or two first.”</p>
<p>“So, what, he’s— secretly pining for Doctor Coomer?” Gordon sits down and shakes his head, almost expecting to feel something loose inside. “Wow. How the hell did you get Bubby to tell you that in the first place?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t. He, uh…” Benrey scoots back and forth along the surface of his phone indecisively, like he doesn’t know whether he should get closer to Gordon or further away from him. “Bubby said he wouldn’t make the deal with the military to rat you out unless they promised to let Coomer go first. Didn’t even ask ‘em to let himself go, so. I don’t have a degree or whatever, but I know a simp when I see one.”</p>
<p>If Gordon weren’t already beyond maxed out on trauma <em>and</em> drama for the day, he might have a medium-level freak-out about that. Instead, he just blinks at the picture of the two older scientists on the screen of Benrey’s phone while a feeling of something like acceptance washes over him. Understanding, maybe. Sympathy, for the unenviable position of being forced to make that call. “Does Doctor Coomer not know about that, either?”</p>
<p>“Nope. Prob’ly better that way, too. It’d bum him out if he knew he had a hand in that. <em>FUCK.</em> Um. I didn’t…” Benrey shrinks even further, now small enough that his head barely peeks out from behind the slim frame of his phone. “Sorry.”</p>
<p>Gordon takes a whisk out of the now completely flattened cream and coolly spatters Benrey’s general direction with it the way some people spray misbehaving cats.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” Benrey repeats, in the tiniest little voice.</p>
<p>Gordon swipes through to other photos from Europe, analyzing them in the light of this new information. The thing that strikes him about them now is how overtly romantic the setting seems to be in each one. Doctor Coomer seems to be in a truly jovial mood throughout, while Bubby seems to be vacillating between trepidation and resignment. “What the fuck is he waiting for, though? If there was ever a time to bring it up, you’d think a vacation in Europe with just the two of ‘em would be it.”</p>
<p>The grain of rice named Benrey climbs back onto his phone with some effort. “Gotta be a self-esteem thing.”</p>
<p>“You think so?”</p>
<p>“Man, no one gets <em>seven degrees</em> unless they got something to prove.”</p>
<p>Gordon snorts, and keeps on scrolling upwards until he abruptly runs out of pictures and message history entirely. His eyes land on a snippet of conversation, the very first messages Benrey’s traded with Bubby on his new phone:</p>
<p>
  <em>                                get real man wd u wanna kno ???</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>                 I’m assuming this is Benrey?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>                                ya</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>                 If given the option? No, probably not.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>                                than shut the up abt it !! &amp;leaf gordos alone or i leak ur lil secrit to comer :) !</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>                 What did you plan on threatening me with after I finally tell Harold?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>                                ??????? like ur gona lmaooooo</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>                 Is that a challenge?</em>
</p>
<p>“Hey, Benrey,” Gordon says, frowning at the screen. “What the fuck is this?”</p>
<p>In a dizzying blink of an eye, Benrey grows from the size of a flea to the size of an adult human and snatches the phone out of Gordon’s hand.</p>
<p>“Private,” he says, smiling.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sorry for another late update!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>